Fairness

It's good to know that the fine folks at Feld Entertainment believe "all children should experience the joy of a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey performance." Feld is the production company behind that storied touring spectacle as well as the more modern Disney On Ice (which currently is touring 8 different shows.)

At Ringling Brothers they are concerned about egality on multiple levels. They put their money where their mouth is and declare that "every child under 12 months old and living in the continental United States (including Alaska and Hawaii) is entitled to receive his or her first ticket to The Greatest Show On Earth® absolutely FREE!" Of course some caring adult must request the ticket in the child's first year, but it is good forever. It is also good to note that in the spirit of fairness they include Alaska and Hawaii in the continental U.S.

But they don't stop there! They also have special provisions for families with multiple child births. Parents simply send copies of the birth certificates to the Feld Entertainment headquarters in Vienna, Va.

Vienna itself holds a peculiar place in the annals of fairness. During the Civil War it had the unfortunate fate of being in the middle of heavily contested territory. The town was conquered by both sides numerous times leading much of the population to flee the confusion.

By 1869 things had quieted down in Vienna and the first public school was built. The school, which doubled as a Baptist church, was for black students only. In 1872 the first white public school opened. Today, the schools in Vienna are part of the Fairfax County public school system which boasts higher than average SAT scores (1094 versus 1016.) Fairfax County public schools has fairness in mind for it's students with its Princess For A Night program which takes in donated prom dresses and accessories and gives them to students who would otherwise be unable to afford them.

Fairfax County is also the birthplace of America On Line. Like many great American products, AOL provides a simplified version of the ever popular internet. AOL provides many services like information on the latest films, listings of important news items, and the essential weather forecast.

Americans have a strange fascination with the weather that extends well beyond their agricultural heritage. This of course is the secret behind all local television newscasts, you wont change the channel until you see the weather - 20 minutes into the program. They count on your captivation for that one nugget of information.

While many local television stations spend plenty of money on various pieces of weather detecting information, none of them can compete with the National Weather Service on pure weather data. The NWS has this as their mission:

The National Weather Service (NWS) provides weather, hydrologic, and climate forecasts and warnings for the United States, its territories, adjacent waters and ocean areas, for the protection of life and property and the enhancement of the national economy. NWS data and products form a national information database and infrastructure which can be used by other governmental agencies, the private sector, the public, and the global community.

For quite some time there has been a wealth of data available from the NWS and it's parent organization NOAA (which has an underwater laboratory.) The problem so far has been the form the data comes in. Until recently it has been composed in such a manner as to make it unweildy for many uses like television broadcasts and websites. Third party companies, like AccuWeather and The Weather Channel (provider of weather information to AOL when they're not busy inviting celebrities over for play dates), have taken the publicly funded data from the NOAA, changed it around and sold it.

Recently the NOAA was finally convinced to release their weather data in a more useful format called XML. XML was designed to be easily converted into a multitude of other formats and has special languages devoted to doing just that. With that change it suddenly became relatively trivial for anyone to make use of the weather data. This opened up what appeared to be a new era of fairness and accessibility.

Unless of course you were one of the aforementioned companies reselling reformatted weather data. To them it didn't sound fair at all, it sounded like "unfair government competition." So they called up their friends in congress and asked for the playing field to be levelled. Rick Santorum was an obvious choice for AccuWeather which is based in Pennsylvania. No one believes in fairness more than Senator Santorum. So Santorum intoduced a vaguely worded bill that prohibits anyone in the federal government from disclosing any information about the weather they get in connection to their position that might affect businesses or markets or products in some way, unless it has been disclosed by the NWS. The bill also prevents the NWS from "competing" against private companies unless it is to warn the public about impending doom.

The director of strategic planning and policy at the NWS responded by saying "If someone claims that our core mission is just warning the public of hazardous conditions, that's really impossible unless we forecast the weather all the time. You don't just plug in your clock when you want to know what time it is."

Quinnipiac University is telling the Penn State Saint what time it is. Their recent polling shows his approval rating and competitiveness against like challengers has continued to drop, partially due to his support of Bush's proposed Social Security changes and his visible role in the Terry Shiavo saga.

You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, Senator Santorum. Who ever said life was fair?