Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

The War on Christmas

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Atrios points us to a deeply hilarious confrontation on CNN today:

SEDER: Listen, as far as the war on Christmas goes, I feel like we should be waging a war on Christmas. I mean, I believe that Christmas, it’s almost proven that Christmas has nuclear weapons, can be an imminent threat to this country, that they have operative ties with terrorists and I believe that we should sacrifice thousands of American lives in pursuit of this war on Christmas. And hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money.

PHILLIPS: Is it a war on Christmas, a war Christians, a war on over-political correctness or just a lot of people with way too much time on their hands?

SEDER: I would say probably, if I was to be serious about it, too much time on their hands, but I’d like to get back to the operational ties between Santa Claus and al Qaeda.

PHILLIPS: I don’t think that exists. Bob? Help me out here.

“Bob? Help me out here.” I think I’m going to be saying that one all day.

You can see the actual clip at Crooks and Liars or Think Progress.

Bay Area housing prices

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On the route to Sophia’s school there’s a house that I love to look at every time we walk by it. It’s surrounded by a stone fence, about five or six feet high, with an iron gate on to the street. There’s a giant playset for kids — as high as a two-story house, made out of redwood, with lots of Habitrails for crawling around. And the house itself (the adult Habitrail) is gorgeous on the outside. I looked it up on mlslistings.com, and discovered the house is as big as it looks, with 5500 square feet and more than a half acre of land. I would love to see the Open House on this one.

Asking price? $4,750,000.

But — believe me, I know how this sounds — I can completely understand that price. That house is quite a package A 100-year-old mansion, sitting on a fantastic plot of land, in an enviable part of an expensive town.

The house two doors down from us just went on the market. It’s 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, less than 2000 square feet. It’s beautiful inside, from the photos, with lots of stone work. And apparently it has more land that I would have guessed from the outside, but probably not a bigger lot than we’re on.

Asking price: $1,675,000

Two words: holy. crap.

The above-the-fold in the San Jose Mercury News today was the Bay Area’s current median house prices.

Santa Clara County’s sizzling housing market cooled a little bit last month, but the median price of a single-family home jumped to a record of $714,250, bucking speculation of a downturn or bursting bubble.

That’s a 19 percent increase from October of last year, when the median price was what now seems a modest $600,000.

The article goes on to say that things are cooling down, the market’s reaching equilibrium, the same overnight-craziness isn’t apparent.

On the up side… if you do manage to cash out of a California home, you can go almost anywhere else in the country and buy the side of a mountain.

On the down side… what’s the monthly payment on a $714,250 house? Who the hell can afford that? And how far are people going to have to drive in order to live somewhere affordable? Or more affordable than this, at any rate?

We’re not in this house for the immediate value it holds — we love this neighborhood, love the walkability of it, are happy as little clams to be here and have the kids here.

Which is good because… when things come back to earth, it’s going to hurt. A lot. And we won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Seriously, what’s in Kansas’ water?

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Via Political Animal, we find new scientific standards set for Kansas schoolchildren:

– The Kansas State Board of Education has once again thrown itself into the middle of the debate over evolution, adopting new science-curricula standards for the state’s 445,000 public-school students that openly question Darwinian theory.

….

The newly approved Kansas regulations, which don’t require the teaching of intelligent design, are significantly broader. They not only question the theory that all life has a common origin, they also rewrite the definition of science, holding that it no longer is limited to searching for natural explanations for natural phenomena.

Hahahahahahahaha!

In the immortal words of the Kung Fu Monkey: Everyone who wants to live in the twenty-first century come stand over here. Everyone who wants to live in the eighteenth century go stand over there, and best of luck with that.

I honestly don’t understand what the appeal of being ignorant is to these people. Other than the joy of keeping other people ignorant, and thereby have power over them. Well, I guess I just answered my own question.