The Bush administration's latest foray into penurious cost-consciousness is reflected in an article in today's San Diego Union Tribune, titled: "White House may put less value on seniors, disabled." The story tells how the Bush OMB director is encouraging new guidelines that would place more value on "younger, healthier" people and less on the elderly and the disabled. This is to allow federal regulators to reestimate the societal cost of any proposed regulation. If, for example, a new pollution requirement would mainly enhance the life of someone estimated to only have 10 years to live, then that regulation could be deemed too expensive. It was bad enough under the original proposals, when senior citizens were involved; now people with disabilities have been thrown into the calculations. For a pro-life administration, this smacks loudly of the Nazi "life unworthy of living" regulations. According to the article: "Critics insist that Graham also wants agencies to give less weight to people with a questionable "quality of life," presumably those who are disabled or ill."'Once government puts itself in the position of saying, 'We're going to give more support to policies that care for young people,' you're basically saying old people and the sick and disabled – it's not cost-effective to save them anymore,' said Wesley Warren, an environmental economist for the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget where Graham works."Scary stuff... All you pro-lifers out there, get off your butts and get on YOUR administration to put a halt to this policy!

To paraphrase Austin Powers paraphrasing Britney Spears, BGS said "Oops, I did it again, baaaby," and laid off seven more people from the San Diego office last Tuesday. Equinanimous to the last, they laid off three linguists, three engineers and the technical writer. All these people were friends, and I was sad to see this happen to them, though in my heart I knew it was coming. This is the strangest set of layoffs. BGS keeps managers and lays off employees. So now they have four managers in an office of about 10 people. Since each of those managers earns about $100K per year, that's $400k (not including benefits, which would double the amount) that BGS wastes. Why not dump the managers and keep the workers? They could save money and be more productive. The highest paid linguist makes about half what the salary of the linguistics manager. Plus, they killed the Miramar next-gen MT product, and have chosen to preserve Barcelona, under the rubric, Maestro. American business practices are unfathomable: golden parachutes to the big guys, a hangman's rope to the little ones. Oh, and a new name to add to the BGS Hall of Shame: Michael Wiesner. He should be deported back to his "Heimatsland" to lay off his own people.What else is going on? My nonfiction book class is over, and I learned a lot from it. The Arabic class is continuing till the end of the month. My first-ever story sale occured last month. My short story, "Probability," sold to "Would That It Were," a Web-based science fiction magazine. Check it out at www.wouldthatitwere.com