Of course there are .22 caliber shotguns! The internet told me so.
A couple of years ago I overheard a recent college grad, at work, exclaim to a colleague, “What did they do before there was Google?” It seems they were searching for some elusive answer to an inquiry they had. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I use the internet for a variety of searches, typically those involving how to get a piece of software/hardware to do what it is supposed to do. However, a good dose of incredulity is in order whenever one reads a search result on the internet. Especially from an “ehow” type site.
Rep. King Calls Out TSA on Security Breach
Of course, this now means that TSA will step-up pat-downs of 5 year-old girls, 90 year-olds in walkers, armed forces personnel, and nuns.
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Facebook Tip for Parents
Did you know you can submit an underage report for your kid if they’ve signed up to FB and are under age 13?
Kinda shadenfroody … Let’s see it take $250k just to jump regulatory burdens in CA to open a hamburger joint, companies that want to startup building cars go to 3 wheels to avoid the high costs of regulation (see Aptera), and so on. All Democrat inspired regulatory burdens that are mostly useless, expensive and hampering real progress. But go ahead, get pissed if it applies to your pet projects.
I don’t get Engaget’s bias here. This is the umpteenth Android tablet they’ve noted “on parity in price” with this and that … but forgetting to mention it’s $100 more than the Asus Transformer? Why the omission? It a anti-Taiwan bias?
Here’s the thing on the recent Afghan move from FP, “It’s clear that Obama and his advisors approach these decisions as politicians, not strategists.” That’s always a bad move in war. Here’s one who concurs.
That’s because those young people are raised by older people who by and large are also … True story. A few weeks ago when my parents visited, my mother claimed to have never heard of William the Conqueror or the significance of the date 1066. I’m still not sure I believe her.
Relative bias in the media vs actual bias. A new book from a UCLA political science professor demonstrate how, because the media is so generally slanted to the left, outlets like Fox appear more right-slanted, when in reality they’re far more centrist.
Rosalina Gonzales had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of injury to a child for what prosecutors had described as a "pretty simple, straightforward spanking case."
Trevor Phillips, chairman of Obama’s Equality and Human Rights Commission accused Christians, particularly evangelicals, of being more militant than Muslims in complaining about discrimination, arguing that many of the claims are motivated by a desire for greater political influence. Hmm, define "militant".
What if Charles Schultz had done cartoons of Doctor Who characters? The result would probably have looked like this.
Democrats pilloried George W. Bush for "not listening to his generals" when he made decisions counter to the Pentagon. When Obama does it, not so much.
Would ID requirements for voting amount to a Jim-Crow-style poll tax on blacks? E. J. Dionne thinks so. James Taranto wonders if ID requirements for Amtrak, hotels, air travel and employment are equally as "racist"?
Nancy Pelosi said that they had to pass the bill before we could find out what’s in it. Apparently, some surprises are buried in there.
President Barack Obama’s health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.
Whenever there is a budget shortfall, taxes are always on the table. How about we take them off just this once?
Medicare spending is unsustainable, and the CBO itself admits that its tools for determine any consequences from Obamacare are flawed. Yeah, that should "fix" health care.
And finally, define "emergency" (click for a larger version):
Better late than never, eh? Actually, I started this in the morning (after traveling last night … I didn’t leave enough to make it to the job site with breakfast + shower + link collect and report).
Some liberals claim that they hold the “reality position” due to the fact that the putative experts are mostly liberal … but when those experts keep making claims like this … well, reality bites.
Someday, yes, someday I’m going to be able to read past the first five sentences of one of Eli’s acerbic attacks and not run into something he says that isn’t flipping idiotic. Let me try to be specific, “Twice he describes something as “attractive,” surely an odd choice given that he means to discuss something fundamentally moral and not just a matter of mere taste.” Hello, there are whole schools of ethics which equate the beauty and the good and furthermore find that ethics boils down to choosing the good (or beautiful) and that what constitutes beauty is not “just a matter of taste” it depends on asthetics and a theory of the same, which has no a priori dependence on taste.
Politics and shark-jumping. My guess is that liberals would point to the Clinton impeachment. I’d point at the Bork/Thomas hearings as the point at which liberal serious engagement in politics and with those on the other side of the aisle left the building.
An "unexpectedly" we could do with down here. "Canada Jobless Rate Unexpectedly Declines in May to Its Lowest Since 2009" It’s down to 7.4 percent. We’re adding government jobs and they’re adding private sector jobs. Our dollar is getting weaker while theirs gets stronger. “Our economy has one of the best records in the area of job creation in comparison with other industrialized countries and this is why we will continue to keep our taxes low,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper told lawmakers on June 8. Lessons to be learned here.
Civility Watch: “Good afternoon brothers and sisters. Welcome to Nazi Germany….Brothers and sisters, this is not going to be an easy fight,” he shrieked. “It took World War II to get rid of the last Adolf Hitler. It is going to take World War III to get rid of Adolf Christie. Are you ready for World War III?” Union leaders are setting the example in New Jersey.
Soaking the rich won’t work the way the Left intends. Historical tax rates vs actual receipts put the lie to the idea that raising rates will necessarily bring in more revenue.
I’m getting to be a crabby old man and I’m not even fifty. But working at a liberal university for eighteen years has taught me never to accept responsibility for my actions or my disposition. Instead I blame my most recent bad mood (the one I’m in right now) on a student who just asked me a question about the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case United States v. Leon, (1984). Wanting to know the holding, he asked if it meant “that the police can rely upon a search warrant they don’t reasonably no is invalid.” I almost told the student there was know way he was going to pass my course if he didn’t no the difference between “know” and “no.” But I just new I would get in trouble if I did.
Maybe I’m getting to be a crabby old man, and I’m already over fifty, but I don’t recall there being such a disparity between college-age adults and post-college adults when I was in university.
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Experience without Reason results in empty pews
It’s become hip for Christian leaders to toss around the “80% [or substitute some other large value] of the kids in our youth groups will leave Christianity by the time they finish college” warning. Regardless of the actual number, most will agree that we live in a time when more people claim to have no belief (or religious affiliation) than ever before.
Brett Kunkle, at Stand to Reason, has a novel idea: Why not teach apologetics to our Christian youth before they leave for college? Yeah, I know, in an age of touchy-feely, Jesus-wants-to-have-a-personal-relationship-with-you Christianity, teaching hard-hitting material which causes one to exercise their brain is considered revolutionary.
To drive the point home, Brett will sometimes role-play as an atheist college professor and present his case to unsuspecting Christian high school students (see video below). Take the time to see how the youth do in defending their faith. How would the youth group in your church do?
I’ve been a professor of political philosophy in the political science department at Michigan State University for almost 40 years. I was chair of the department for four years. So I know a thing or two about the state of the student body…
…
…more and more of my students, and not just freshmen, can’t tie their own shoes. They lose syllabi and can’t follow simple instructions; they don’t get the right books; they e-mail me to ask when and where the final exam will be held (as if they didn’t know when they signed up and don’t know how to find out); they forget to bring blue books to exams; they make appointments and don’t keep them; and many never come to office hours at all, except perhaps on the day before an exam.
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College is a waste of time
Some college students are finding the whole idea of dropping a wad (or, their parent’s wad) to be caged in for four years, inculcated in the ways of the world, to not be their style. Dale Stephens writes,
I left college two months ago because it rewards conformity rather than independence, competition rather than collaboration, regurgitation rather than learning and theory rather than application. Our creativity, innovation and curiosity are schooled out of us.
In a Michael Ellsberg article highlighting Stephens, we get a glimpse at the counter-cultural notion that young-adults (aka teenagers) are more than capable of entering the full-fledged “adult” world.
Usually when we hear the words “disruption” together with “teenagers,” we think of loud talking in movie theaters, playing clown in class, and other discipline problems.
But teenagers like Stephens are engaging forcefully in a very different—and more profitable—form of disruption: disruptive innovation, as first described in detail by Clayton Christensen in The Innovator’s Dilemma.
Instead of perpetuating the myth of adolescence, in which we train our young-adults to expect the years of 13 – 20+ to be years of unfettered FUN, why not task them with the responsibility of being productive members of society?
The Administration’s war powers response. It strikes me that there’s a double edged thing going on here. In the 80s, if I recall, war powers arguments were used by the Dems against Reagan in several contexts (Nicaragua?) which the GOP supported (and likely Mr Obama at the time opposed). So, for the left, why oppose that and not this and conversely for the right the similar argument holds.
He may have legal recourse … but that doesn’t mean he should avail himself of it. Should you avail yourself of laws you think are wrong but which are in your favor.
Pah. The ultimate goal of “bike culture” was aptly stated by Freddy Mercury … “Get on your bike an ride!” And that’s the beginning and end of it.
This reminds me of a homily by Isaac the Syrian which praised the passions (which are usually put in a negative light).
Visiting with our rusty philosophe. First, uhm, what is “1”? It’s a little more complicated than you suspect. One good exercise at an attempt to construct the Integers is found here, but don’t pretend it’s cut and dried or corresponding to your naive notions. And here, the little assertion (on which so much contends) that sexual acts are not intrinsically moral but “depend on context”. Whether killing a person is ethical depends on context. However, killing even if you determine it was ethical remains a moral act. So too with sex. It is intrinsically moral.
