Well there’s a title that screams “Come on in and have a cuppa'” doesn’t it?

Police and Fire Fighter [tag]pensions[/tag] are getting the axe all over the country, but I wasn’t sure how widespread the problem was. The situation is even more depressing than I thought, according to an article in the Washington Post today, “Growing Deficits Threaten Pensions.”

Between this and yesterday’s revelation that, “Some War Dead Were
Cremated at Facility Handling Pets” I haven’t been able to post a coherent thing about the situation in [tag]Burma[/tag].

I can say that I think Google’s matching funds campaign is excellent for the people of Burma, but may have a lasting impact on those who click because it does something useful in addition to raising funds – it educates people on where Burma is. Not just a spot on a map – the newspapers and news do that adequately. I feel like people engage with Google Maps in a way that gives the images they view some actual context (at least sometimes, or at least more often than a static image in a newspaper).

I think I need to go have some [tag]pho[/tag] and a lot of Vietnamese coffee before I dig into the rest of the paper.

Later I’ll post about happier things like [tag]Artomatic[/tag], the [tag]SanFran MusicTech[/tag] conference, and my trip in general.