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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).
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Friday, March 10, 2006
Real Artists I'm a real savage with respect to art. I am not impressed with most art done since Impressionism. I confess that my favorite artist is Johannes Vermeer. I was reading through an art history book one day when I was at Lincoln Junior High, and I quickly flipped past a photograph (I thought) of a Dutch city. Then I asked myself, "What's that doing here?" And when I flipped back, I was stunned. Click here for a high resolution image of View of Delft. (And this does not even begin to capture how precise of a painting it is.) There are still some profoundly talented artists out there, but most of them are commercial artists. Still, if you want to be impressed with this unique combination of trompe d'oeil and anamorphic art, look here. Styrofoam-Eating Bacteria Yet another environmental bugaboo may be about to bite the dust (okay, bite the Styrofoam): Despite being made 95 percent of air, Styrofoam's manufactured immortality has posed a problem for recycling efforts. More than 3 million tons of the durable material is produced every year in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Very little of it is recycled. Someone Needs To Wipe The Silly Smile Off This Woman's Face Click here to see her mugshot. She has now been arrested for the second time for killing someone with a motor vehicle. The first time, several years ago, she was convicted: The woman arrested in Tuesday's hit-and-run death of a South Richmond hotel worker spent several years in a Tennessee prison for the 2001 killing of a 13-year-old girl, authorities said yesterday.You want to know why I am so darn skeptical of the utopia that will supposedly result from decriminalization of what are now illegal drugs? Because there are too many like this floating about who can't seem to learn from their past inability to handle alcohol. Without Shame Back when I was young, and I thought that it was possible to shame politicians into doing the right thing, I voted for an initiative in California that required electoral district lines to be as compact as possible, and to not cross county or city boundaries when possible. The motivation for this was some truly repulsive gerrymandering that California's legislators had done after the 1980 elections to guarantee "safe" seats for Democrats. State Senator Diane Watson's district in Los Angeles was an octopus, with a central body in Watts, and "tentacles" reaching out to the black sections of Pacoima, Venice, East Los Angeles, and San Pedro. To create a "safe" Democratic Congressional seat for Carey Peck (Gregory Peck's liberal son, who had never held a real job in his life), they drew a district that ran from Malibu to Laguna Beach. One section ran along the coast in front of Los Angeles International--a place where there was literally not a single residence--a mile or so deep, and several miles long. The goal was simple: if you want a safe Democratic seat, you need a lot of rich people. In spite of this, and in spite of Republican "B1 Bob" Dornan's rather bombastic approach to politics, Democrats kept missing (by very small margins) putting a Democrat in that seat. The other side of this gerrymandering was some truly amazing districts for Republicans. I can't remember his name now, but there was one Republican who got a "safe" Republican seat because the Democrats needed somewhere to stuff the Republicans and non-citizens--and this guy's seat was not only safe, but relatively cheap to run in, because a truly astonishing fraction of his constitutents could not lawfully vote for him, anyway. (Oh yeah, he had a district that ran from Los Angeles to somewhere near Reno--another warpedly weird district that must have been tiring to visit.) I thought that some of these ugly district lines inflicted after the 1980 elections were as bad as it could get. (So bad, as it turned out, that the combination of the gerrymander and the four-year state senate elections meant that some voters went six years without a chance to vote for or against their state senator.) But now I see this monstrosity, which like the "safe" district intended for Carey Peck, is again a "rich people vote Democratic" coastal margin. I've driven this section more times than I can count--and what a cynical attempt by the Democrats to retain power. If I were in charge of drawing district lines, I would do it very simply: 1. Start in the northwest corner of the state. 2. Accumulate census tracts to the east and south in as square a pattern as possible. 3. When you reach the required number of people, according to the census tract, draw a line around that collection. 4. Resume collecting just to the east of the previous district line. 5. When you hit the eastern boundary of the state, create a rectangle instead of a square, until you get enough people. 6. Do not allow any of the people involved in the process to look at any data about the race, income, age, or voting characteristics of people in these census tracts. Easter Island, Land of Many Myths? You may be aware that some anthropologists in the 1920s were briefly convinced that the Easter Islanders were remotely related to the Scots, because of some of their dances. Only later did it turn out that they these "ancient traditions" were the result of a Scotsman who had lived there (cattle ranching, I think) some years earlier. Margaret Mead is, in some ways, the archetypical anthropologist of the period--capable of visiting exotic, remote locations, and seeing what she wanted to see. It appears that one of the other great myths about Easter Island is about to be demolished--the myth that Easter Island was settled almost two thousand years ago by Polynesians, who destroyed paradise by uncontrolled population growth: The first settlers on Easter Island didn't arrive until 1200 AD, up to 800 years later than previously thought, a new study suggests.Worth reading in full. Hunting For A Car For My Son This is not a pleasant experience. I would prefer to buy a car that is still under factory warranty, because it makes it simpler and cheaper to buy an extended warranty. At the same time, such cars command (rightly) more of a premium than they used to. It is so much simpler to be buying cars in economic hard times. Either that, or buy a disposable automobile--one in good enough shape that I feel comfortable having him drive it, but that is cheap enough (say, under $1500) that if needs a major repair in a couple of years, that I won't feel like I am throwing good money after bad to junk it. One surprise: there seems to have been major improvements in crash safety over the last few years. Cars that I did not even consider to wrap around my precious cargo, like the Hyundai, Kia, and Suzuki sedans--have crash ratings equivalent to the 2001 Malibu that he totaled without serious injury. What Causes ACLU Derangement Syndrome? When the chairman of an organization with Islamic terrorist ties ends up on the board of the Florida affiliate of the ACLU. Read Stop the ACLU's collection of links--it is another reminder that the ACLU is on the enemy's side. Public Trust in Institutions This will just fry the leftists. A new Harris Poll finds that the institution mostly highly trusted by the American public is the military: A total of 47 percent of Americans said they have a "great deal" of confidence in the military. Some 38 percent of Americans said they had "only some" confidence and 14 percent said they had "hardly any" confidence in the military.And at the bottom of the list? At the bottom of the survey, released March 2, were law firms at 10 percent, Congress at 10 percent, organized labor at 12 percent, major companies at 13 percent and the press at 14 percent.As the sign on one of the local businesses here in Boise says, "99% of lawyers make it hard on the rest." Thursday, March 09, 2006
Dr. James Dobson Attacked For Being Too Pro-Gay No, seriously. Read all about it here. Apparently, he backed a proposal that, as an alternative to gay marriage or civil unions, simplified hospital visitation and medical care direction issues for unmarried couples--and groups that fancy themselves more conservative than Dobson are attacking him for doing so. We Must Have Driven Him To Do It! That's going to be the left's explanation for why someone we held at Gitmo did this: A former Guantanamo prisoner has been arrested in Moscow on charges of blowing up a gas pipeline in Russia’s Muslim Tatarstan Republic in 2005, Interfax said Thursday.Oh yeah, here's another one we released: A former prisoner of the US military base Guantanamo in Cuba, Rasul Kudayev, was detained in Nalchik Sunday, the Interfax news agency reported citing its sources in the republican law enforcement agencies.It makes you wonder a bit about the ones that we consider so dangerous that we haven't released or extradited them, doesn't it? Thanks to Gateway Pundit and Western Resistance for bringing these to my attention. Wednesday, March 08, 2006
A Guilty Laugh It reads a bit like a Monty Python skit, and I want to laugh--but it is really a tragedy as well, when you consider his victims, and how mentally ill this guy must be to think that he could bite himself to death: A multiple killer tried to bite himself to death while in Broadmoor high security psychiatric hospital, the Old Bailey has heard. Do You Have Some Good Books That Need A New Home? Well, don't send them to me! I have too many already. But the New Orleans Public Library system is in need (not surprisingly). This just came through one of my academic mailng lists: DONATE NEW AND USED BOOKS TO NEW ORLEANS LIBRARY... Bizarre Conspiracy Theories, Part 1,230,459 A friend of mine who is starting to "dabble" in Treasury bonds points me to this sad little discussion on the Bureau of the Public Debt web site of bizarre theories leading to fraud: There has been a proliferation of bogus sight drafts and bills of exchange drawn on the U. S. Treasury Department. These documents have now appeared in a majority of states and have been used in an attempt to pay for everything from cars to child support. The so-called "redemption" theory being asserted by those who promote this scheme is bizarre at best. Click on the thumbnail image at left to view a full-size image of a "Bogus Sight Draft" (230K JPG file, uploaded 12/12/2002).Oh my. I can't decide whether to laugh or cry at such attempts. The Dunblane Massacre, Ten Years Later Do you remember Dunblane? Ten years ago, a very evil person--one who had been warned by police that he was far too interested in little boys--went on a rampage, murdering 16 children with handguns. In response, something called the Snowdrop Campaign persuaded the British Parliament to ban all handguns. Now, remember, that handguns in Britain were very restrictively licensed in 1996. It was easier to get a permit to possess a handgun in New York City than in Britain. Yet this guy, who the police were already concerned about, had a license to own a handgun. There have been allegations floating around for some time that Hamilton had a cozy relationship with the local police, and was allowed to keep his handgun license, in spite of reasons to think that he was a pedophile. Apparently, quite a number of documents related to the official inquiry into what happened were put under a 100 year seal, supposedly to protect the privacy of children that Hamilton had molested. But this report indicates that there were many documents sealed that do not fit into this explanation: LETTERS between Labour and Tory ministers and correspondence relating to Thomas Hamilton's alleged involvement with Freemasonry are part of a batch of more than 100 documents about the Dunblane mass murder which have been sealed from public sight for 100 years.The Guardian, which is definitely on the left end of the newspaper spectrum in Britain, also raised questions about this: There have been allegations that the lengthy closure order was placed on the report after it linked Hamilton to figures in the Scottish establishment, including two senior politicians and a lawyer.Now, at least some of these documents were apparently released last year, and Dr. Mick North, father of one of the children who was murdered, had some harsh words: Dr Mick North, whose daughter Sophie died, said the authorities missed several opportunities to take action against Thomas Hamilton before he killed 16 children and their teacher.There are allegations which appeared in a Daily Telegraph article (now beyond the archive wall) that Hamilton was allowed to keep his handgun license--in spite of clearly not being a "suitable" person to have one--because he was a supplier of child pornography to important people within the police force and government: "I believe that Hamilton was a major provider of pornographic photographs and videos to a ring of men prominent in Central Scotland, including police officers who protected him from numerous allegations of physical abuse at boys' camps and clubs he ran. They protected themselves after the massacre which conveniently ended in his suicide."Of course, bizarre conspiracy theories are always more interesting than simple police incompetence. But you have examples such as the "Lords of Bakersfield," where a small circle of sexual misfits in important positions seem to have used their influence to cover up little matters such as the sexual abuse of teenagers and murder. I don't know what the truth of the matter is with respect to Dunblane. I do know that police corruption in the issuance of gun licenses in those parts of the United States where police have discretion has been a problem for many decades; I would be startled to see this not be a problem elsewhere. I suppose if restrictive licensing actually worked as claimed--that it keeps guns away from people that are dangerous, or who can't be trusted with guns--there might be some argument for it. I still think the argument is not persuasive, but the fact is that people like Hamilton got a handgun license in Britain tells me that restrictive licensing does not even do a good job within the "We're from the government, and we know better" model. The partner of the father of one of the victims has written a very controversial book: The book, Dunblane Unburied, has been written by Sandra Uttley, the former partner of Dr Mick North, an anti-gun campaigner whose five-year-old daughter, Sophie, was killed in the massacre.I suppose that I should get a copy of it. Labels: child sexual abuse Religiously Offensive Cartoons Oh dear, a student newspaper at the University of Saskatchewan published a religiously offensive cartoon. But no, not offensive to Muslims. The previous week they had discussed the controversy around those cartoons, but did not actually publish them: Then-editor-in-chief Will Robbins wrote an editorial telling readers the Sheaf would not publish the cartoons, which have offended so many.So what did they publish? The newspaper is issuing a mea culpa after a cartoon depicting Jesus performing a sex act on a capitalist pig was published in Thursday's edition of the Sheaf.Yeah, right. (Michelle Malkin has reproduced it here, if you really need to see it. It lacks artistic merit as well.) Now, I expect this sort of simultaneously offensive and ignorant cartoon at a university. Leftist professors encourage this sort of cartoon-like view of important issues, and not surprisingly, students follow through on it. What I find despicable is the way that the left goes out of its way to not offend Muslims, while printing cartoons like this. The Left Isn't Against Theocratic Oppression; They Are Anti-America You are probably aaware that the Taliban's Ambassador-at-Large is now attending Yale University--in spite of only a fourth grade education. A Yale graduate wrote a letter recently to Yale's president, complaining about this double standard--that they regularly turned down highly qualified applicants, and when her husband attended Yale on an ROTC scholarship, he had to spend an hour traveling--because Yale wouldn't allow ROTC there, because of the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy about homosexuality: The last time I checked, the US military doesn't kill anyone for being a homosexual. Nor would any soldier-on-soldier hate crime ever be tolerated. On the other hand, the Taliban advocated murdering any homosexual and anyone else they felt violated their version of Islam. So ROTC isn't acceptable because it offends Yale's standards, but a Taliban leader who condones the Taliban's policy of brutally killing homosexuals and stoning women for not wearing a burka should be recruited lest Harvard win his matriculation?This is why I hold the left, and their allies, the mainstream media, in such contempt. They sue to prevent the Ten Commandments from being a public park; they threaten suit for an historic cross on the County of Los Angeles's seal; they compare the Religious Right to the Taliban (when the American Religious Right is practically the ACLU, compared to the Taliban)--and then they admit to Yale a guy who was an apologist for a despicable theocratic totalitarian government, and by any objective standard, unqualified. The left doesn't really object to theocracy or totalitarianism. They just object to Christianity. This is why I hold the ACLU and the rest of the left in such contempt. They are hypocrites and liars. My Son Had His First Car Accident Monday He got a couple of bruises, but otherwise uninjured. He was turning left from a shopping center onto Chinden Blvd., which is a very busy four lane highway, and he misjudged how fast a car coming towards him was moving. The body shop called yesterday and told me that the total was at least $11,000, so I expect that Progressive will total it. I'm not sure if they give us retail or wholesale blue book value for the car--I've never had a car totaled before--but I'm hoping that it is the retail value, since that is what it will cost us to replace it. I'm disappointed, because this was a very nice car, a 2001 Chevrolet Malibu LS, with leather upholstery, sunroof, and a very nice factory stereo (with both CD and cassette in-dash). On the several occasions that I have had to drive it recently, I have found myself saying, "Gee, if something happened to the Corvette, and I was reduced to driving the Malibu again, I could live with this very easily." A few months back, my son was trying to prove his independence by wanting to buy his own car, and complaining that the Malibu only gets around 20 mpg around town. My wife and I were reluctant (even though it would have meant being able to sell the Malibu) because the used cars available at a price that he could afford did not meet our standards. The Malibu weighs about 3000 pounds, and considering the speed of the collision, did a fine job of protecting our son. The other cars that he was looking at were 2000 pounds or so, and some of them were in such unroadworthy state that I wanted to firebomb them, just to make sure that no else would drive these heaps. (Yeah, that's my inner liberal at work.) One VW Golf he looked at I named Frankenstein, because it was assembled from pieces of several Golfs. The seller explained that he had bought this car from someone who had found an engine control computer here, an engine there, but had mixed and matched the wrong components, and he had spent a bit of time getting the right engine control computer for this year, etc. It drove well enough, but it wasn't confidence-inspiring. Anyway, I suppose that we will be looking for another mid-sized car, perhaps even another Malibu of similar vintage, for him to drive to college. My wife had a reminder last night of the importance of having some mass around when driving; she met a young man missing an arm and a leg. No, not a war injury, but a car crash when he was a teenager. Would buying a Bradley Fighting Vehicle for my son be excessively protective? Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Room Sizes Michael Williams asks the question: Given 2000 square feet for a home design, how would you allocate it between rooms? More small rooms, or fewer big rooms? Let's say that the 2000 square feet is after any hallways are accounted for. How many bedrooms and bathrooms would you put in, and how big? What about the kitchen and family rooms?My wife and I went through this questioning process a few months back, while designing our new home. (Perhaps "designing" is a bit strong--we modified an existing design.) There has been a strong tendency the last decade or two for bedrooms--especially master bedrooms--to be very, very large. Look, there's two things that you do in bedrooms, and neither of them requires a lot more floor space than a bed and a chest of drawers. (Unless you are doing things that I don't want to know about, and genuinely need a lot more room than a couple needs.) Bathrooms are another area where architects seem to have gone a bit overboard on space. Our new house we may have gone a little too far in the other direction (largely because we didn't plan on the size of our jetted tub for two early enough in the process), but again, a bathroom is a place you shower or bathe, shave or apply makeup (perhaps both, for you metrosexual urban elites). It isn't a room that I plan to spend hours on end, nor is it a room that typically needs space for more than two. Formal dining rooms are a very nice thing--but if I have my choice of a large formal dining room or a small formal dining room and a small "breakfast nook," I'll take a single large formal dining room. If you have a dozen friends over for dinner, the large formal dining room lets you entertain everyone in one room, perhaps by pushing together two tables. Otherwise, you have two dinner parties. (This would be a less abstract issue if my wife and I had enough friends in Boise to invite over to a dinner party. But alien life forms are always as a disadvantage in this respect.) The more open the floor plan, the more airy the house feels, and the more air that you can actually get to blow through the house on a warm summer's day. That's part of why the house that we had built has high open arches between living room, dining room, kitchen, and family room. You can see the floor plan here. The only substantial modification was that we moved the wall of the master bathroom one foot into the master bedroom for the bigger tub--which has swapped places with the toilet, and the vanity is now in the corner where the tub is on these drawings. Why Capital Punishment Makes Me Uncomfortable There's this news report in the Idaho Statesman today that reminds you how fallible (at best) the human beings are that operate criminal justice systems: IDAHO FALLS — A man sentenced to life in prison in 1991 for murdering a 15-year-old girl in Ashton will face a new trial and could soon be free on bail.Okay, bad news. Both of these are worrisome matters--certainly matters that raise questions about whether Grube received a fair trial. But it gets worse--one of those list of "horribles" that makes me think of that old Vicki Lawrence song, "The Night The Lights Went Out in Georgia": Meanwhile, it's been more than 10 years since Grube's conviction and several pieces of evidence used in the case are no longer available.Maybe this guy Grube is guilty, and the police only "improved" the evidence a bit. These are the sort of incidents that make me very, very disinclined to execute anyone who hasn't confessed to the crime. And He Would Know! George Lucas, on why big budget movies are doomed: "The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with 'King Kong.'" The portly Lucas, whose "Star Wars" sequel was nominated for the Oscar in makeup, was clearly in Yoda mode at Saturday's Weinstein Co. party — Harvey Weinstein's first Oscar bash since he abandoned Miramax to Disney last year. "I think it's great that the major Oscar nominations have gone to independent films," Lucas told me, adding that it's no accident that the "small movies" outclassed the spectaculars in this year's Academy Awards. "Is that good for the business? No — it's bad for the business. But moviemaking isn't about business. It's about art!"And he should know. I never saw the last Star Wars movie in the theaters. I had heard that it was a thinly disguised attack on George Bush, and most people were complaining about the quality of the dialog. We borrowed a DVD of it from one of my wife's students over the weekend, and I am glad that I didn't waste my money on it. Yes, there were a couple of lines put in the words of the bad guys that sounded like Bush's post-9/11 speech. I was even more disappionted to hear Obi-Wan Kenobi make the claim that, "A Jedi never speaks in absolutes." But part of the attraction of the first three Star Wars movies--part of what makes them blockbusters in an era when Hollywood was still in love with antiheroes and moral relativism--was that they involved a fight between good and evil. Yes, there were shades of good and evil. Han Solo was a mercenary--but when push came to shove, it was possible to appeal to his better nature. By the third movie, we could even see that as evil as the Emperor was, there was still a faint glimmer of humanity in Darth Vader. (The Emperor, however, was completely evil.) From an artistic standpoint, however, this movie was a disaster. The dialog, except in the last ten minutes or so, was written by a robot, and the actors playing Anakin Skywalker and his wife delivered incredibly bad dialog with a level of emotion that made the dialog look good. Part of what made the first three movies so interesting was that while there was an element of the supernatural to the powers of the Jedi, they were not completely removed from the natural world. Obi-Wan had some limited power to influence the minds of the weak-willed, and some limited telekinetic powers, but he wasn't exempt from physics and gravity. By comparison, this movie was more like a video game. Our heroes aren't just doing gymnastic leaps--they are making jumps that are simply beyond the realm of human capability. The result was curiously uninteresting--although I suppose that 13 year old video game junkies might have enjoyed it. The last ten minutes of the movie finally reached a point where I could feel something coming out of the movie besides cynical marketing manipulation, as Anakin's wife dies, and the soon-to-be Emperor manipulates Anakin's grief into anger. I would say that there is little danger of Lucas being pressured into making a sequel to this turkey. Global Warming: Heavy Snowfall In Sahara Desert Oh yeah, this really persuades me: Algeria - Heavy snow has cut off villages and clogged key arteries leading away from the Algerian capital Algiers for several days, national police said on Sunday.Record cold snap impairing crops growth in Florida: A cold front swept across Florida early in the week of Feb. 14 to 19. This cold frontal system set record lows across the state, with temperatures averaging two to seven degrees below normal at In West Virginia record cold causing problems for the homeless. In Missoula, Montana: In Missoula, it was the coldest temperature ever recorded for a Feb. 18 - 23 below zero was predicted - and the National Weather Service said it expected another record low for Feb. 19.In the San Francisco Bay Area: BRRRRR. That chill you feel is bona fide record-breaking cold, fresh from the darkest depths of Canada, delivered via air-mail on a jet stream that's looped backwards to drop it on you here in California.In Denver: The temperature at Denver International Airport fell to a record low of 12 below zero early this morning, after a high Friday of just 12 above.In Seattle: The winds quieted down Friday, but the National Weather Service predicted record cold overnight, with lows in the Seattle area in the 20s and in the single digits in the Tacoma area.I suspect that the "Global Warming" fantasy will continue until polar bears start to eat environmentalists at global warming conferences in Miami. Labels: global warming Monday, March 06, 2006
Thomas Kinkade & A Lesson In What Wealth Does Whenever I get irritated that I still have to work for a living (unlike lots of people I have known over the years--you'll sometimes see them in, "Why I bought two Gulfstream V jets" ads)--I see sad stories like this one, about Thomas Kinkade--a person wealthy enough now that he has no excuse for sharp or questionable business dealings. I can understand the person who is struggling to pay his bills who plays a little fast and loose with creditors--but when you become a multimillionaire, and are still engaged in sharp business practices, my sympathy declines. Now, it is possible that the arbitration award of $860,000 against Kinkade for defrauding two gallery owners is less than it appears. The allegations are that Kinkade misrepresented the profit potential of opening galleries selling Kinkade's art, and engaged in practices that wiped some of them out: "I love to talk about my faith," he said in a deposition. "I try to embrace people with love, unconditional love, like Christ did." It is possible that these gallery owners were misled--but there's some real truth in the aphorism, "You can't cheat an honest man." People sometimes get into business deals that make very little sense because they have been blinded by their greed. Many conmen rely on this, and the proof is left to your email, where people pretending to be the heir of some African government official asks for your help in moving millions of dollars of ill-gotten gains. You will get a million of it, if you just transfer a few thousand dollars from your account here, to an account in Nigeria. I am sorry for people that get scammed like this, but not very sorry. They were expecting to get rich with no real work, and instead made someone else rich with no real work. If Kinkade's problems were limited to allegations of shady business practices, I would not know whether there was something there or not--but the article includes so many other signs of a person who is out of control, failing to live up to his proclamation of the Christian faith: In sworn testimony and interviews, they recount incidents in which an allegedly drunken Kinkade heckled illusionists Siegfried & Roy in Las Vegas, cursed a former employee's wife who came to his aid when he fell off a barstool, and palmed a startled woman's breasts at a signing party in South Bend, Ind.None of us are without sinful tendencies and occasional behaviors. I am sympathetic to the Christian who thinks he has it together, and falls into sin. But you know, you can fall into sin, and learn not to repeat the situation--and if you keep putting yourself in that same sinful situation again and again, my sympathy declines. The guy (or gal) who has a bit too much to drink on a business trip, and ends up in an adulterous one-night fling--that is a tragedy. But if this keeps happening, it raises some serious questions about whether they truly have put Christ first in their life. Rock Tumbler? Do you have a rock tumbler? My wife wants to try an experiment with some basalt from our land, before we spend the money on a rock tumbler. Muslim Student Association Now Has Editorial Control Over Oregon State University Student Newspaper Tired of being offended by blatantly hostile remarks towards their religion, Muslim students now have "persuaded" the Oregon State University student newspaper to give them editorial approval over articles: At the Daily Barometer, editors said e-mail and phone calls poured in. Senior editors have met with the Muslim Student Association.If the Christian Student Association were given editorial control over offensive articles, the ACLU would be filing suit immediately. But if it offends Muslims, liberals fall all over themselves trying to make them happy. Camille Paglia Can Get Away With This Not many others can. Of course, that's because she's an openly bisexual femniist, that she can insult the feminists of Harvard with this particular line: While many issues are rumored to have played a role in Mr. Summers's resignation (including charges of favoritism in a messy legal case involving foreign investments), the controversy that will inevitably symbolize his presidency was the manufactured outcry early last year over his glancing reference at a conference to possible innate differences between the sexes in aptitude for science and math. The feminist pressure groups rose en masse from their lavishly feathered nests and set up a furious cackle that led to a 218-to-185 vote of no confidence by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences last March.The rest of the article is worth reading as well. Rumsfeld v. FAIR (2006) This was the case where Congress passed the Solomon Amendment, which required universities to allow military recruiters equal access as other potential employers, or lose federal funding. Not surprisingly, law schools, which have long imposed a requirement that employers not discriminate based on sexual orientation, sued. The decision is here. It was an 8-0 decision in favor of the Solomon Amendment. I heard some commentator discussing this on Fox News this morning, and he made the point that there is nothing that so clearly establishes the gap between the university elite and the masses than this suit. The law schools were insisting that they had a right to both take money from the federal government, and ignore their rules. Personally, I hope the universities stop taking the money. As far as I am concerned, places like Harvard and Yale are so much more on the side of al-Qaeda anyway, perhaps they should be requesting their funding from bin Laden. It would certainly be more honest. Parental Notification & Abortion I've learned not to be too trusting of studies that appear in the New York Times, but this is interesting, nonetheless: For all the passions they generate, laws that require minors to notify their parents or get permission to have an abortion do not appear to have produced the sharp drop in teenage abortion rates that some advocates hoped for, an analysis by The New York Times shows.Now, I have always been a little skeptical that parental notification laws make that much of a difference in abortion rates. My argument for parental notification is that in most states, you can't get your ears pierced, or medical care, without parental consent (much less parental notification). Abortion, in case you hadn't noticed, is a bit more significant of a procedure than an ear piercing. As a parent, I am responsible for caring for my minor children, and to not even by notified that a child had surgery--much less be involved in the decision about whether to have it--is insane. (But of course, that's what the ACLU's function is--to constitutionalize insanity.) Whether parental notification raises or lowers abortion rates is irrelevant; I am responsible, as a parent, for the actions my minor child takes. I should be involved in those decisions. The article makes a point that the pro-choice extremists probably don't know about, since they live in a fantasy world, anyway: Supporters of the laws say they promote better decision-making and reduce teenage abortions; opponents say they chip away at abortion rights and endanger young lives by exposing them to potentially violent reaction from some parents.Here's a harsh reality. A lot of people who are horrified by abortion in the abstract are surprisingly willing to have their daughters get abortions rather than have the child and put it up for adoption. Some of this is based on shame. Some of this is based on a genuine concern for their daughter, and the complexities that this is going to introduce into her life. I suspect that this is why survey after survey finds a majority of Americans want abortion discouraged, but not prohibited. They know that there's something wrong with it--but they can also imagine what the situation would be if their own teenaged (or younger) daughter ended up pregnant. We need to be focused more on root causes: 1. A culture that promotes early sexuality--and it isn't like teenagers need any encouragement on this. 2. An unwillingness of parents to provide an appropriate level of supervision. When most parents are working full-time, there's no one at home after school--which is where and when most teenaged sex is happening. 3. An unwillingness to face up to the fact that making contraceptives available may encourage teens to have sex--but it will also reduce pregnancies among those teens are going to have sex, regardless. 4. The entertaiment media's unwillingness to discuss the enormous STD hazards associated with promiscuity. When my wife and I were going through Lamaze classes, just before the birth of our daughter, there was a girl in the class from the East Coast who was no more than 15. She was going to give birth. A very nice couple was there to coach her, because they were going to adopt the baby. (A couple of years later, they were murdered in their home by the jealous boyfriend of their maid, who had falsely told him that the husband was forcing her to have sex.) This girl was, even for her age, pretty immature. I just cringe at the number of girls like her, who shouldn't be having an abortion or giving birth. Labels: abortion Winter I am so tired of winter cold. Spring in Boise is beautiful--sometimes crisply cold, but at least sunny. Fall in Boise is beautiful. Summer can be unpleasantly hot--but at least nights are pleasant. Winter, however, is too many days like today, that open gray and cold, and stay that way. Sunday, March 05, 2006
Shipping Stuff To The Far Side of the World I just received my first ScopeRoller order from New Zealand--and I am shocked to see that I can ship a 9 pound package to the other side of the planet for $28.10--and have it there in 4-10 days. Amazing! House Project: Front Drain In Okay, so we drove up there Friday night, and the rain and snow had been pouring all day. We get there, and the drain in the drainage channel at the front door of the garage is in place.  Click to enlarge But there was a snowdrift in front of the garage door--and inside, while not anywhere near as bad as before ("A River Runs Through It"), there was still a bit of water accumulated.  Click to enlarge I'm not sure what is left to do, without extending the roofline several feet--and because the snow was blowing horizontal on the garage door at the time, I am not sure that this would make much of a difference. Anyway, we were able to get quite a few more books on the shelves in the office.  Click to enlarge But we are also starting to move my wife's literature books, and since those are going on bookshelves not yet moved (or even completely emptied), they are sitting in little forlorn piles in the corner.  Click to enlarge On the way back out, we experienced what is probably the reason this area hasn't developed a bit faster--horizontal snow. I am really wondering if putting a wind generator on our hill wouldn't quickly pay for itself in electricity generated. The snow was flying into us at about twenty degrees below parallel to the ground, and once we started driving, it seemed to be going completely horizontal. My wife and I, both be California kids, have no experience with snowstorms this intense. The combination of the huge amount of it falling, that it is coming straight at the windshield, and in the dark, meant that we were beginning to have serious second thoughts about driving back down to Boise--perhaps camping out for the night in the new house. It was just on the edge of scary. We went back up Saturday with more books, and then did a careful inspection of the tile. The tile guy is supposed to come back this coming week to replace some cracked tiles--probably caused by settling over the last several months, as well as temperature changes. We went through very carefully, marking every cracked tile or cracked grout. The builder still doesn't have a solution for the three doors that close themselves. A common trick of bending the hinge pin to increase friction doesn't seem to be doing it. I think that I may have come up with a very clever solution--perhaps clever enough to be patentable--and it doesn't require removing or altering the hinges. I'll keep my mouth shut for a few days, until I get a chance to fiddle with this idea in my machine shop. Last house project entry. Labels: house project |
