The next little rule is to move torrent files out of my downloads folder. I don’t run bit-torrent on my MacBook Air, but I do run it on my Mac mini that is back at my house. I would never remember to send those files to that machine for download, so I enlisted Hazel to do the task for me. All this rule does is takes any ‘.torrent’ files and moves them to a specific folder in Dropbox. That folder is watched by the Mac mini and Torrent files auto-start once they are detected.

I was doing the same thing with torrents and Dropbox (bonus, I can initiate a torrent download from my iPhone/iPad using Goodreader and Dropbox). This clever trick using Hazel makes it all the better.

In editing letters for “Dear Farhad,” my occasional tech-advice column, I’ve removed enough extra spaces to fill my forthcoming volume of melancholy epic poetry, The Emptiness Within.

WHAHAHAH

A close look reveals a much more complicated picture. Concerns about the state of public education are not unwarranted, but there is no evidence that the presence of unions impedes academic success in American schools. Consider this: in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, where public schools are heavily unionized, students earn the highest scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the standardized exam known as the nation’s report card. In contrast, students in states such as Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas, which have few if any teachers union members and virtually no union contracts, have the lowest NAEP scores. What’s more, in almost all the nations that outperform the United States in education, teachers are unionized and teaching is a respected profession.

Proving that the issue is much deeper than union and anti-union struggles. The complex of class, race, sex, etc. contributes most deeply to American education system. Teachers should be treated with dignity, assigned appropriately to their strengths, offered opportunities to improve, and supported by teachers and administration alike.

Wolf argues that the accusations against Assange demean the seriousness of rape. In fact, Swedish law does distinguish among degrees of rape, with Assange being accused on one count of the least grave kind. In a much-cited letter to the Guardian, Katrin Axelsson of Women Against Rape argued that Sweden’s low rape conviction rate proved that Assange was being set up—in 2006, she claimed, only six people were convicted out of 4,000 reported. Not so. “I don’t know where they got those figures,” Amnesty International’s Katarina Bergehed told me by phone from Sweden.

My take on the whole Assange issue is that we need to think about ethics, not law. We should give Assange special treatment because he is special, just like we should give refugees special status, people in war, etc.