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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, October 08, 2005
There Is Only One Way To Think! Can you imagine what the reaction would be if a university president sent a memo to professors telling them that they were not to discuss post-colonialist perspectives on history in their classes? True, the post-colonialist perspective is a minority viewpoint within the academy, but what about academic freedom? What about promoting a free range of academic debate on important issues? How can we truly have an intelligent discussion of issues that affect current foreign policy if one minority perspective is prohibited from the classroom? But because the left controls the universities, there is a minority perspective that is no longer allowed at the University of Idaho: “Because of the recent national media attention on the issue,” reads President Timothy P. White’s letter, “I write to articulate the University of Idaho’s position with respect to evolution: this is the only curriculum that is appropriate to be taught in our bio-physical sciences.” The short letter goes on to allow for the teaching of “views that differ from evolution” in other courses, like religion and philosophy, but not as a scientific principle, which is “testable and anchored in evidence.”Scott description of the Intelligent Design critique as "scientific creationism" is about as accurate as calling John Kerry liberalism "Marxist-Stalinist Communism." Here's the harsh reality that a lot of people do not want to hear: Intelligent Design advocates include real genuine scientists, working in their fields--like Microbiology Professor Scott Minnich--of the University of Idaho. Minnich hasn't been a problem in the classroom, according to this article: Scott Minnich, an associate professor of microbiology at Idaho, will testify in coming months in a trial in Pennsylvania where 11 parents sued the Dover Area School District for instituting rules that encourage students to consider “intelligent design.” Minnich will testify that the theory is legitimate science. Minnich said he thinks the university has “a right to oversight,” and that “the president has a right to show the public that we haven’t gone off the reservation here,” he said. Minnich said he already adheres “to the rules” in his classroom, and only talks about “intelligent design” if a student raises a question. His concern about the letter is that it might be saying he can’t even address questions. Minnich is meeting with White next week to get clarification. “I want to assure him that even if I am a proponent of ‘intelligent design,’ I’m not using this as part of my curriculum,” Minnich said. “A few times students have raised questions, and I respond, and I state my viewpoint, and make it clear it is my viewpoint and not the consensus.”Is it really so scary to have a professor say, "Look, evolutionary theory still has some serious questions. This doesn't mean we throw the theory out--but it does mean that we have to solve the questions, and not just ignore the holes." UPDATE: I was at the University of Idaho over the weekend, and I saw posters everywhere for Eugenia Scott's talk about how Intelligent Design is heresy, and no scientists take it seriously. Labels: intelligent design Friday, October 07, 2005
Child Molesters As A "Protected Class" How California. How ACLU: LOS ANGELES--Did you know that in California, child molesters and rapists are a protected class? It's true. Not only are California landlords banned from using the state's Megan's Law database to decline renting their properties to sex offenders, they're not even allowed to warn other tenants that these paroled criminals are now their neighbors. If they do the first, they can be fined $25,000 for housing discrimination. But if they don't do the second, they can be sued for failing to protect tenants against a known danger.Yeah, how odd. You might almost think that there's some political alliance between homosexuals and child molesters--and just when everyone was beginning to forget about the North American Man-Boy Love Association's regular (and for a long while unopposed) presence in gay pride parades. Spaces Matter The picture at this web site shows what happens when you inform someone that a writing instrument is stuck in an office machine--and fail to make a large enough space between "pen" and the verb. I Really Wish Texas Wasn't Such A Liberal Place The news story is from Des Moines, Iowa, about a guy who was arrested for kidnapping a 20 month year old and molesting her. So what's the Texas connection? This guy was convicted in Texas in 2003 of raping a woman--and he was already out on parole: Police said a registered sex offender who lived at a Des Moines homeless shelter kidnapped a toddler Tuesday at the downtown library and sexually assaulted her in a locked men's room while employees worked to open the door.This guy served no more than two years in prison for rape--and after he got out, he was again breaking the law: Effler was jailed in May for public urination and arrested less than a month later for drunken driving. He spent 30 days in jail, according to court records.There are a lot of people who think that it is cruel, unfair, and counterproductive to keep violent criminals in prison for a long time. This guy is a pretty good example of what is wrong with that fantasy. Ghetto Social Pathology; Prejudice; Mislabelling There are so many things in this news story that anger me. I'm not an advocate of capital punishment, largely because of the irrevocable nature of it, and the uncertainties of the criminal justice system--but this guy didn't deny that he did it. He just blamed rap music: HUNTSVILLE — Convicted killer Ronald Ray Howard was executed today for fatally shooting a Texas state trooper, a slaying his trial attorneys argued was prompted by Howard listening to anti-police rap music.He blamed rap music and police mistreatment for his actions: In an interview Wednesday at death row, Howard recalled the trooper pulling him over on U.S. Highway 59, apparently for a broken headlight.The article, however, contains lots of other indicators that ghetto social pathology was already at work. Remember that the article mentioned that someone had "located" two of his children? At the time of the April 1992 shooting, the 18-year-old father of four was on probation for burglary. He acknowledged Wednesday stealing "a lot of cars" but said it was the normal activity for kids in his part of Houston.Except for murdering a police officer. Jurors in Austin, where Howard's trial was moved because of publicity in Jackson County, needed just 40 minutes to convict the self-admitted drug dealer and seventh-grade dropout. The same panel, however, deliberated six days before deciding he should die.Bill Cosby talks about the destructive ghetto culture that has developed since he was a kid; Ronald Ray Howard could be the poster boy for it. Oh yeah, while I am no fan of capital punishment, and I would probably vote in favor of abolishing it, were I ever crazy enough to run for public ofice again, I get really incensed at the dishonesty of some of the anti-death penalty groups: In last-day appeals, David Dow, with the Texas Innocence Project, argued in the federal courts Howard was abandoned by a previous court-appointed attorney who failed to file proper appeals.Look, if someone is innocent, or there is at least a reasonable doubt as to whether someone committed the murder for which they are going to be executed, then "Texas Innocence Project" has a powerful moral argument to make. But Ronald Ray Howard doesn't deny that he shot to death a police officer, and his only defense is that other people who wore a police uniform years before had mistreated him. Change "police officer" to "black men" and "Tupac Shakur" to some neo-Nazi skinhead band's hate-filled recordings, and see if this would still be such a liberal cause. Thursday, October 06, 2005
Mental Health Court I am so pleased to see that our legislature is paying attention to this issue, instead of trying to wish it way. The Idaho Statesman has a column by one of our judges about this new approach to dealing with mentally ill criminals--and why it is needed: The Idaho Supreme Court has established a Mental Health Court in Ada County. This court utilizes an interdisciplinary team to monitor closely and provide treatment and assistance to mentally ill defendants charged with or convicted of non-violent, non-sex offense felonies in Ada County.Certain ideologues insist that mental illness does not exist--that mental illness is a myth. Deinstitutionalization is largely the result of idiotic ideas like this famous statement by Thomas Ssasz: Involuntary mental hospitalization is like slavery. Refining the standards for commitment is like prettifying the slave plantations. The problem is not how to improve commitment, but how to abolish it.Here's another example of Szasz's political fanaticism and ignorance masquerading as knowledge: No further evidence is needed to show that 'mental illness' is not the name of a biological condition whose nature awaits to be elucidated, but is the name of a concept whose purpose is to obscure the obvious.The fact is that some psychoses, such as schizophrenia, have genetic components to them. Here's another paper that reviews the range of studies that come to the same conclusion: schizophrenia has a significant genetic component. They are indeed biological conditions. One of the reasons that I have moved well away from libertarianism is that it in the most extreme ideological forms--such as Thomas Szasz exhibits--it has a fanaticism to it that yells, "Damn the evidence, full speed ahead!" Libertarianism isn't unique in this respect: Marxism has a similar fanaticism--with the additional hazard that Marxism, because it glorifies state violence, has killed many tens of millions of people over the last century. (Fanatic libertarianism, at least, won't do that.) It is perfectly fine to have a model that explains how things work, or should work. Even if 90% of the time your ideology explains the facts, there are still those 10% of situations that don't fit. The mark of a fanatic is that rather than accept that there are exceptions to the beautiful theory, or call into question whether the model may need a bit more analysis--they simply deny the facts that don't fit. Labels: deinstitutionalization It Is More Than 50 Years Since Brown... And shockingly enough, there are public schools that still explicitly segregate students based on race. But it is a form of racial discrimination that liberals and leftists will find very acceptable. Here's the flyer for sections of an Arizona State University English composition class--open only to Native Americans. Here's a copy of the faculty web page as of September 21 where an English professor states that certain sections of the class are for Native Americans only. Here's the web page as it is today so that so that it isn't explicitly discriminatory. There might well be a valid concern that some students really do need "a supportive, encouraging, and non-threatening atmosphere" in which to succeed. But I don't see any reason to assume that every student in that position is a Native American--I'm sure that there are whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, who need such an environment to do well. What does it say about the other sections, however? Are they not "a supportive, encouraging, and non-threatening atmosphere"? One of these days, the left end of the political spectrum is going to discover that students are individuals--and they need to be treated like individuals, not representatives of a race. When Condoleeza Rice talks about the soft bigotry of low expectations, this is what she means--the assumption that Native American college students can't compete on an equal footing with others. Thanks to Discriminations for the pointer. Really Good News A vaccine that prevents two strains of HPV from causing cervical cancer: TRENTON, N.J. (AP) - The first major study of an experimental vaccine to prevent cervical cancer found it was 100 percent effective, in the short term, at blocking the disease and lesions likely to turn cancerous, drug maker Merck & Co (MRK) said.Now, this is really good news; the spread of HPV, and the cervical cancer it causes, kills about 3000 women in the U.S. each year. Because the news/entertainment media only cares about STDs that kill gay men, the problem of HPV gets very little press attention. I am a little concerned that the only significant discussion of this will be an attempt of the news/entertainment media to promote promiscuity because the problem is solved. There are plenty of other strains of HPV to worry about: Other types of HPV also can cause cervical cancer and painful genital warts. About 20 million Americans have some form of HPV. Mark of a Fanatic This news story manages to combine both the left's love of foul language and their belief that offending people is more important than persuading them: A Portland woman's flight home was stopped short in Reno, all because the message on the T-shirt she was wearing.Ever since Cohen v. California (1971), in which the Supreme Court ruled that the F-word on a jacket was a Constitutionally protected form of free speech, the left has been behaving like a bunch of 14 year olds, intent on proving how grown-up they are by throwing words like this into everyday conversation. Ms. Heasley's insistence on wearing this shirt is also pretty indicative of the left's general level of immaturity ("Bush = Hitler" and burning the American flag are other sterling examples)--they would prefer to offend rather than persuade. I suppose that we should be glad that the left is more interested in generating disgust than agreement. My father was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, but like a lot of Americans, he was greatly put off by the countercultural baggage of the antiwar movement. I am reminded of the liberal whine in the late 1960s that the counterculture sorts should learn to "work within the system." Sad to say, way too many of them did that--producing the deranged left end of the modern Democratic Party. Perhaps we should rely on the left today continuing this sorry tradition of offending with style instead of persuading with substance. "Nature Red in Tooth and Claw" Apparently, Burmese pythons are now living in the Everglades--with unpleasant results. This news story includes a photograph that isn't anywhere near as descriptive as the text: Gator-guzzling python comes to messy endThe article goes on to discuss this in terms of bad horror films: The snake was found with the gator’s hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Mazzotti said the alligator may have clawed at the python’s stomach as the snake tried to digest it. Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Does Someone Need To Make A European Gun Self-Defense Blog? Okay, it wouldn't be quite as busy as ours--for a variety of reasons--but there are some interesting items that appear from, for example, Belgium: Meise resident shoots burglar Never Bring A Knife To A Gunfight Was that in the movie version of The Untouchables? I hope this guy has learned his lesson--and that it is a bad idea to chase burglars out of the house--although I can at least respect that he didn't just beg for mercy from what was obviously a very bad bunch: LONE TREE, Colo. -- A 20-year-old man in Lone Tree is recovering from his injuries after he confronted three burglars in his home with a samurai sword and was shot in the leg. House Project: You Could Almost Live In It Okay, I have a working digital camera again. I don't know if it is because Kodak tries harder to deal with darkness, but I found myself taking pictures where I would not have even tried with the HP camera. Fiddling with the exposure in my computer produced pictures--not great, but at least a few pictures that are adequate to show you. It was just about dark when we reached the house. The back porch has the tar paper in place; that's where the water came in during the heavy rains last weekend.  Click to enlarge Much of the interior had this hard material on top of the subflooring--I guess to properly support the tile.  Click to enlarge Here was a big pile of it, still waiting to be put down.  Click to enlarge All of the sheetrock has been taped and textured--now just waiting for paint.  Click to enlarge Here you can see the septic tank, about 120 feet east of the house. I understand that this and the leech field were supposed to be covered over as soon as the inspector approved it; I don't know what is holding this up.  Click to enlarge There's a long trench running down the hill to the leech field; unfortunately, it was too dark by the time we got there to get a good picture. But a leech field is effectively four big plastic lines with little holes in them to let the liquid material that flows out of the septic tank slowly filter into the ground. This is just a few feet from the road where our property line ends. Previous house entry. Labels: house project Why Reid Is Backing Miers At least part of why a lot of conservatives are skeptical of the Miers nomination is that Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) is backing her. I think rather than reflexively assuming that this reflects a left-right issue, they might want to consider it as an elitist/ordinary person matter: WASHINGTON — When Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid surprised liberals by applauding Harriet Miers' nomination to the Supreme Court, he was displaying a hint of disdain for elitists and admiration for a Western lawyer who, like him, pulled herself up by her bootstraps.I confess that while it would be nice to have a serious scholar up there, like Michael McConnell, or a gutsy conservative judge like Janice Rogers Brown, there is something to be said for having someone who isn't part of the academic elite up there. You know? Someone who is of the masses (or at least started there), instead of someone who has spent their lives as part of the upper crust? There's another reason why Reid may be backing Miers--Reid appears to be weakly pro-life. It actually takes quite a bit of guts for a Democrat to support any regulation of abortion--perhaps this is his way to get a pro-lifer to replace O'Connor? I am warming to Miers--not because I think she is the best possible pick, but she may be the best possible pick that Bush believes that he can get through the Senate right now. I must confess that I have a lot more confidence that she would be willing to overturn Lawrence--perhaps for the wrong reasons--than anyone who has been a law professor. Somewhere there must be a law professor who doesn't buy into the whole "homosexuals are oppressed victims, let's make them love us" thing, but I don't think I've seen one. Perhaps it is part of the employment contract when they start teaching. Labels: abortion Repairing The HP PhotoSmart 812 Camera It turns out from doing a bit of searching around the Internet that quite a number of people have had the same bad experience that I have with the HP PhotoSmart 812 camera--if you power it up, and it runs into anything with more resistance than a single sheet of tissue paper (like the inside of a soft camera case), the little gear that extends the lens breaks. (See angry, "never buy another HP" reviews here, and here. HP charges, depending on who you talk to, anywhere from $139 to $400 to repair it--which obviously makes no sense, when you can buy a better replacement with a warranty for $198. There's plenty of similarly broken 812 cameras available on eBay. Like this one, and this one, and this one, and this one. Now, I wouldn't invest a lot of money into such a fragile camera--but I bet if someone put a little time into finding a source for the gears that break, they could probably repair these cameras with about 20 minutes of effort. I know that I would have paid $50 to have it repaired--even if it only lasted until the next time I fumbled the power button while placing it in the case. This seems like a market opportunity for someone. Fun With Machining: I Think I Have It Right Thanks for the many useful suggestions. What I have learned: 1. Twist drills (the conventional kind that you use in a electric drill) are just not intrinsically accurate enough to use for anything that requires precise centering of a hole. I was using a center drill to make a pilot hole in the end of the Delrin cylinder, but once I switched to a 5/16" twist drill to deepen and enlarge the hole, I was getting a consistently off-center hole--by as much .05". This was even happening when I was using a twist drill in a drill press. 2. The oscillation of the 3" long Delrin cylinder in the 3 jaw chuck was making it impossible to get a consistently turned diameter down the length. This was caused by several factors. One is that a 3 jaw chuck has an intrinsic inaccuracy of a few thousandths of an inch--which isn't all that bad--but draw a triangle turning around the long axis, and you will see that this becomes a good bit larger as you get farther from the chuck. It doesn't help any that Delrin, being a pretty hard material, is hard to lock down with a chuck, and so it tends to "wander" under acceleration. My approach had been to try and drill and tap a 3/8"-16 hole in one end of the Delrin cylinder, and then use that hole to hold the cylinder next to another piece of Delrin held in the 3 jaw chuck. The solution that actually works is to: 1. Cut a 4"+ cylinder of Delrin on the miter saw, which gives me two faces that are reasonably close to square. 2. Face each end of the Delrin cylinder in the 3 jaw chuck. 3. Center drill one end. 4. Use a live center in the tailstock to hold the Delrin cylinder. 5. Place the live center in the hole, snugly, but not tightly. 6. Start the lathe turning slowly, and then advance the tailstock so that the live center slips and slides exactly into the center position. 7. Turn the lathe up. 8. Find the exact start of the cylinder by advancing the cutting tool until I just start to get flakes of Delrin. 9. Advance the cutting tool by 10/1000ths of an inch. The material is 3.80" diameter; I need 3.60" diameter. Moving the cutting tool .010" inward means reducing the diameter by .020". 10. Advance the cross-slide down the cylinder until I am 1/4" of so from the jaws. (They are easy to see, and I am sure that I am not going to hit them.) 11. Reverse the cross-slide back to the start of the cylinder (which removes a lot of debris and smooths the surface out a bit). 12. Using some 400 grit sandpaper, I polish the cylinder in the lathe. It comes about smooth enough that there are no sharp edges. I really don't want it too smooth, because a little friction helps prevent rotation in the tripod legs. 13. I take the piece back to the miter saw, and take a 30 degree cut at the end that was in the 3 jaw chuck--just at the point where I stopped turning the diameter. (If I had a vertical mill, I would prefer this--but I don't, and this face isn't going to visible to the customer.) So far, I have made three pieces that are a bit too small--2.34" diameter instead of 2.36"--but I learned steps 8 and 9 from making this mistake, and verified that I can now produce cylinders that are at most .01" difference from one end to the other. Now, a machinist wouldn't be terribly happy with those results, but at my current level of experience, and for what I need, this is good enough. Yeah, It's a Little Risky But I don't think Ford Motor Company is going under between now and 2011--and the annualized yield to maturity was 9.9%. It was also only $15,000 par value, so there's not a lot at stake. Another Fundamental Right? BBC is reporting on this Danish disabled man's struggle to get the government to pay the delivery charge: Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, which severely affects his speech and mobility, believes his local authority should pay the extra charge he incurs when he hires a sex worker - because his disability means he cannot go to see them. His case is currently being considered. Bought A Camera I decided that the savings of buying online weren't enough to justify waiting several days, so I went to Wal-Mart. There were several cameras around $120-$130 that were 3.1 megapixel, but no optical zoom, and for $198, I was able to buy a 4.0 megapixel Kodak with a 5x optical zoom. Sold! I'm not likely to use the extra resolution for pictures that go on the blog, but I do sometimes use this resolution for photographing original documents or artifacts. Here's a picture of Tater Tot the Tiny Terrorist--behaving almost like a pet, instead of deranged mini-mountain lion.  The user interface is much nicer than the HP--perhaps because it has more buttons available to use for input controls. Also, many of the standard camera controls (distance, high speed pictures) are on a selector dial at the top, rather like a conventional film camera, and thus a bit easier to fiddle with than the HP's controls. The included Kodak software for downloading pictures is also more elegant than the HP software. Of course, with newer versions of Windows, you just plug in the USB cable and download pictures--no need to install anything. This is useful if you are on the road, and want to upload pictures on a friend's PC. I've put the broken HP PhotoSmart 812 camera up on eBay; and the docking station. Tuesday, October 04, 2005
Why Is This Oklahoma Suicide Bombing Getting So Little Attention? Tapscott's Copy Desk asks, if this was just an ordinary, non-political suicide: why is the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force now the lead agency in the investigation?The bomb went off killing Hinrichs 100 yards from a stadium filled with spectators for a football game. Premature detonation, perhaps? Apparently the quantity of explosives in Hinrichs' apartment was quite substantial. Hinrichs' father denies a political motive. The Oklahoma University student paper is also discounting any homicidal intent--but does have this interesting quote: Another oddity of the circumstances surrounding Hinrichs’ death is the means in which he died, Swann said. If Hinrichs’ death was a suicide, the method he chose to use was rare.I don't know that I should take too seriously this web site, which purports to have been told by local police investigating the matter "off the record" that Hinrichs had some involvement with Pakistanis. (There's no permalink to the story there--which looks like a technique to make sure that you scroll all through their site.) This news story would suggest a simple suicide: Hinrichs was the youngest of five. His parents are going through a divorce.Still, it is rather odd that the FBI is investigating a suicide with no apparent interstate reason for federal interest. UPDATE: This story is apparently a lot bigger. Gateway Pundit is reporting that Hinrichs attempted to buy a large quantity of ammonium nitrate the week before, and attended mosque--and his Pakistani roommate has disappeared. TATP (the overly sensitive explosive used in London, and by Richard "Let me light my shoe" Reid) was apparently involved. This might explain why Hinrichs blew himself up 100 yards from a stadium full of people. There Are People This Naive But I can't imagine how they manage to buy bread at the market without assistance: SEATTLE (Reuters) - An Oregon woman whose doctor convinced her that he could cure her lower back pain by having sex with her is suing him and his medical clinic for $4 million, according to legal documents obtained on Monday.Oh yeah, that's definitely the place for casual sex--in the doctor's office. Shortly after we moved to Boise, there was a similar example of, "How stupid are you?" in the local paper. A couple met a guy at the local health food store who offered to give their nine year old daughter massages. They of course assumed that his motivations were completely pure, and proceeded to let him have unsupervised time with the daughter. This made the paper because, surprise, surprise, the "masseur" molested their daughter. People this stupid walk and breathe at the same time only because breathing is a function of the autonomic nervous system. At least the victims in this news story were mentally ill, and had an excuse: KANSAS CITY, Kansas (Reuters) - A Kansas husband and wife who ran a psychotherapy practice went on trial on Tuesday on charges that they kept mentally ill people as slaves, forced them to perform sex acts on videotape and then billed Medicare nearly $1 million for the "therapy."There's a lot more in the article that is too unpleasant for me to quote. It makes you wonder how much money gets spent by various governmental insurance plans on this sort of stuff. The good news is that the couple is facing 200 years of prison time if they are convicted on the many charges. The Ever Expanding Definition of Fundamental Rights Mayor Gavin Newsom, who thought that gay marriage was a fundamental right last year, is expanding the definition once again: SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who became internationally known for his campaign a year ago to legalize gay marriage, said on Monday he considered wireless Internet access a fundamental right of all citizens.I can see the arguments for and against having the government providing wireless internet service--but that's not the same as a "fundamental right." On one side, having such service ubiquitous certainly can improve economic efficiency--rather like good roads promotes trade. It was not at all free market, but government subsidies of canals, railroads, and highways in the nineteenth century certainly encouraged the development of the United States as an economic superpower. This wasn't an unmixed blessing; the subsidy to the railroads accelerated expansion into the West, to the severe detriment of the Indians. Without the enormous subsidies given to the railroads the settlement of the West would have been slower, and perhaps provided an opportunity for the various tribes to have more comfortably acculturated. There is a strong argument in opposition to governments providing wireless internet access. It puts private firms at a distinct disadvantage, and to put it bluntly, governments haven't shown the history of innovation and efficiency that has historically come from private firms. Still, these are both legitimate, pragmatic arguments. Calling wireless internet access a "fundamental right" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what constitutes a "fundamental right." First of all, it is hardly "fundamental." This wasn't even available fifteen years ago, and now it is "fundamental"? Secondly, calling it a right means that the government is not simply required to get out of the way--but actively provide it. The rights contained in our Bill of Rights are negatives; they say that the government may not deny X, or specify limits on when the government may deny X. Newsom is not arguing that the government should get out of the way, but that it is has an obligation to provide wireless internet access. At what rate should we consider that this "fundamental right" is not being met? If you can't get 500 kilobits per second, are you being oppressed? What makes 125 kilobits per second a denial of a fundamental right, but 1000 kilobits per second is not? What about those of us who can't even purchase wireless internet service because we are out in the boonies (at my new house)? Should I be able to file a 42 U.S. 1983 suit because my "fundamental right" to wireless internet access is being denied? What next? I mentioned a few weeks back that the Danish government subsidizes prostitutes having sex with the disabled once a month--a government entitlement. (And as with most government services, it is severely underprovided!) I shudder to think what other "fundamental rights" Newsom is going to discover over the next few years. UPDATE: BBC is covering a Danish disabled man's fight to have the government pay the "outcall" charge for a prostitute: Torben Hansen, who has cerebral palsy, which severely affects his speech and mobility, believes his local authority should pay the extra charge he incurs when he hires a sex worker - because his disability means he cannot go to see them. His case is currently being considered. Sort Of Duh! But still good to quantify what is obvious to everyone except liberals: Women who have children out of wedlock are about 30 percent less likely to get married than childless single women, according to a new study.Is it because they are unwed mothers, and so regarded as "damaged goods"? Or did they make poor choices (failure to use contraceptives; failure to hook with responsible guys) because of a lack of intelligence, and this caused them to end up marrying losers (excuse me, victims of an oppressive capitalist system)? If you think I am being too hard on liberals: google for "Murphy Brown" and Quayle--and remember the firestorm of criticism that liberals had for Vice President Quayle's very important speech: And for those concerned about children growing up in poverty, we should know this: marriage is probably the best anti-poverty program of them all. Among families headed by married couples today, there is a poverty rate of 5.7 percent. But 33.4 percent of families are headed by a single mother are in poverty today. I Wouldn't Make This One Up It is just so outrageous that you would accuse me of fiction (at best): Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.I found this so outrageously unbelievable that I did a little googling--and sure enough, there are news stories here and here confirming this insanity--although suggesting that this was just for the duration of Ramadan. Thanks to Michael Williams for the pointer. Is Miers Shrub's Souter? This web site has a questionnaire filled out by Harriet Miers for the Lesbian/Gay Political Coalition of Dallas, when Miers was running for city council. The Human Rights Campaign (one of the homosexual lobbying groups) is crowing about how gay-friendly she was back then--but the same questionnaire also shows that she opposed repealing the Texas statute prohibiting homosexual sodomy that was struck down in Lawrence. Some of her other answers are sufficiently ambiguous that it is rather difficult to tell if she is as pro-gay as the Human Rights Campaign would like to believe. Of course, lots of people were a lot more liberal on these issues a few years ago than they are now (me included). On the one hand, she is 60 and never married--a "confirmed bachelorette," as the British might say? On the other hand, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family was on Fox News last night praising Bush's choice, and giving answers that suggest that Dobson knows exactly where Miers stands on the social issues that matter to Dobson (and on which I am increasingly in agreement with him). I still think Bush could have picked a stronger nominee: Michael McConnell or Janice Rogers Brown. Unfortunately, McConnell has a long history of serious scholarly work on the meaning of the establishment clause, and that would almost certainly doom him with the Democrats. Brown is something even more detestable to the Democrats than an intellectual--and that is black conservative intellectual who can accurately say the opening line from Steve Martin's The Jerk: "I was born a poor black child." Labels: homosexuality "Taiwan, Province of China" Yup. Go to Google's maps page, and search for Taiwan. That's how it describes Taiwan. As you might expect, the Taiwanese aren't happy. Neither am I. Monday, October 03, 2005
Failure Rates On High School Graduation Tests: Not A Good Sign Michael Williams points to a recent Los Angeles Times article about the problems with the high school graduation test that you now have to pass to get a diploma--and about 20% of high school seniors statewide are failing to pass. Both the article and the Michael Williams point out that there is a very severe ethnic disparity on the passage rates: Teachers, according to the report, said that many students arrive unprepared and unmotivated for their high school courses and that their grades often reflect poor attendance and low parental involvement.This is really, really bad news. I can see why Latinos have low passage rates--at least for those Latinos who are immigrants, and may not have mastered English sufficiently to take full advantage of those first twelve years of public schooling. But why is the African-American passage rate 63%--not just dramatically lower than white and Asian students--but even lower than the Latino rate? With a few oddball exceptions, African-Americans have been native speakers of English for almost two centuries now. The standards aren't that high--eighth grade level math and ninth or tenth grade English--and even this is beyond more than one-third of African-American high school seniors in California. This is an embarrassment--and it should be an embarrassment to African-American communities. Education is the only practical way for a poor kid to move out of poverty. I know that ghetto schools are often inferior to suburban schools--but what would Booker T. Washington have said? He and a lot of other black Southerners were confronting not just grossly inferior schools (in a way that simply does not exist today), but an entire society that did not want blacks to go to high school--and yet an astonishing number overcame this enormous adversity. This isn't the situation today. If you surveyed every conservative in this country, you might find a few dozen that wouldn't want every black kid to graduate from high school, with at least the minimal level of competence that California's graduation exam requires. Bill Cosby has been running around the country emphasizing that black communities need to stop blaming white racism for a failure to take education seriously. These results are pretty damning. Wardrobe Malfunction? No, Drafting Error I had mentioned a while back that Professor Volokh concluded that indeed, the criticism that Justice Ginbsurg had, back in the 1970s, supported lowering the age of consent to 12 appeared to be factually correct. Now he is saying that it appears to have been a drafting error--that the proposal copied text from one section, and referenced another, and it may have been a perfectly innocent drafting error. This is certainly a plausible mistake, and I am prepared to believe this, absent any other evidence. Still, I understand that there were some questions asked about this when Ginsburg was confirmed for the Supreme Court in 1993. Did Ginsburg or anyone else who worked on this proposal give this an explanation? I would feel a lot more comfortable--especially since there were and are liberals who think all age of consent laws should be repealed--if anyone could demonstrate that Ginsburg recognized and acknowledged that this was a drafting error. If Father Andrew Greeley Wrote This... It would just be another lurid hack novel: (WCCO) Hudson, Wis. A judge has found there would have been enough evidence to charge Rev. Ryan Erickson, a Roman Catholic priest, for the murder of two people inside a Hudson, Wis., funeral home more than three years ago.This is one of the problems with sin; it seldom stays contained. What started out as a priest trying to put the ACLU's notion of the Constitution into action turned into two murders and a suicide. (Of course if the ACLU had its way, Erickson wouldn't have needed to commit murder--there would have no crime to cover up, and we know how the Catholic Church has traditionally felt about molesting priests--"Where would you like to be assigned next? A home for runaway teenaged boys?") Titus Andronicus Just as a reminder that Shakespeare was capable of writing really unimpressive plays--there's Titus Andronicus. Julie Taymor's 1999 version is visually stunning, but this play is still Shakespeare's least impressive effort. The choice of Anthony Hopkins in the title role after playing Hannibal Lecter wasn't exactly inspired, either--there's some strong similarities in the characters, especially in their notions of what constitutes food. This was one of Shakespeare's early plays, and if you don't find rape, dismemberment, and cannibalism sufficiently gruesome to drive you away, you might actually enjoy Taymor's film. It is a play that really doesn't make sense set in modern times--but it doesn't even make much sense set in Roman times. Shakespeare's historical plays are noted for their anachronisms, but this is just too far over the top. Still, Taymor's decision to put this in a modern setting is quite imaginative. The struggle over who will become Emperor is cast in terms of a Fascist Italy political campaign, with 1930s costumes--but some of the cars are 1950s, and the video games played by Tamora's sons are 1980s. At the same time, the buildings are a startling mixture of Roman ruins and modern skyscrapers. It works better than it sounds, and I am not a big fan of modernizing Shakespearean plays. What makes the play not work--and Taymor has remained faithful to it--is the unrelenting evil of so many of the characters. There are truly evil people out there, but most bad things aren't done by evil people, but by people who are misled, lazy, or ignorant. The Moor Aaron is so completely without any human qualities that my wife wonders if Shakespeare wrote Othello as compensation, much as criticism of the anti-Semitic representation of Faigin in Oliver Twist caused Dickens to write Our Mutual Friend. The dismemberment, rape, and cannibalism that are the most offensive parts of the play aren't shown terribly graphically, but this is definitely not a film for kids. Maybe not even for most adults. There is an orgy scene near the end of the movie which was perhaps a bit more explicit than it really needed to be--but relative to Hannibal Lecter/Titus Andronicus making dinner, that's nothing. The Miers Nomination You know, the Constitution doesn't require you to be a judge--or even a laywer--to sit on the Supreme Court. There are times that I think it might even be advantageous to have a non-lawyer on the bench. (This is usually when I am fantasizing that some close friend of mine has managed to get elected President, and needs a sensible voice on the Court.) Still, I do cringe a little at Bush's nominee. She has never been a judge. If she has some distinguished academic background, or has shown some scholarly accomplishment in history, I haven't seen it mentioned yet. What, exactly, makes her more qualified than say, Judge Janice Rogers Brown? Oh, I see. She's a stealth candidate--no long history of decisions that can be dissected and perhaps unfairly criticized for actually taking a stand. I do see one interesting qualification that she has: Whatever her credentials for the high court, Miers' loyalty to Bush - who once called her a pit bull in size 6 shoes - is above question. When he first decided to run for governor in the early 1990s, he hired Miers to comb his background for anything derogatory that opponents might try to use to defeat him.I think I will start the paranoid conspiracy theory of the moment: "She had secret information about Bush that she used to blackmail him into nominating her!" I don't actually believe this, but I am sure that those suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome will start imagining all sorts of horrifying stuff that she is holding over Bush's head in order to get on the Court. "She knows where Bush had the alien bodies buried after he hit the UFO at Roswell while driving drunk to deliver another cocaine shipment!" UPDATE: The good news (from Dave Kopel): she is apparently a strong supporter of the right to keep and bear arms. The House Project: You Wil Have To Take My Word For It As I mentioned below, my digital camera is out of service at the moment, so I will have to describe the current state of things. We went up there yesterday. The septic tank is in the ground; the leach field is installed; all that remains is for the inspector to approve it before they cover everything over. It rained heavily (for Idaho) over the weekend. While most of the roof has the tar paper in place, the back patio did not. (The roofing subcontractor insisted to my builder, "It's not going to rain this weekend.") The water came in and made a small pool in the dining room. The builder says that this won't be a problem--houses are now built year-round here because the demand is so strong, so they have experience dealing with rain on the subflooring, and know how to handle it. Labels: house project Digital Camera Go Boom! I've been using an HP PhotoSmart 812 camera for almost three years now. The first one that I had broke within 18 hours of me opening the box. The particular failure mode, I am discovering, is quite common. When you turn on the power, the lens moves out--and if it runs into anything, no matter how lightly--the gear that causes the motion breaks. The camera then shuts down. So what should I buy? I am not going to spend several hundred dollars to buy another HP digital camera. It works reasonably well--but it is very fragile. I accidentally hit the power button while putting the camera into a nylon carrying case--and not even a particularly form fitting case. Even that was too much for the gear in question. I could see buying a digital SLR (perhaps a Pentax, to take advantage of the existing Pentax format lens that I have for my Pentax ME Super)--this would let me do astrophotography, which is practically speaking impossible with the various point and shoot digital cameras. Still, that's about $650-$800. I could see buying a low end digital camera--perhaps even something in the 3 megapixel range. For pictures that are primarily going to be emailed or put on my blog, that makes some sense, especially because some of these cameras are really, really small. I can buy a 3 megapixel HP at my employee discount price of about $104. The ideal would be if someone had a low end digital camera sitting around that they aren't using anymore because they have moved up to a high end digital camera, and they were interested in either donating it to the house building picture project, or selling it to me cheap (like under $50). |
