Stones Cry Out

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.

"Smart" diplomacy; cozy up to dictators, snub our friends.

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):

Good day.

1. Cassandra was right.
2. Double? But, hey, I hear all those “responsible” Democrats don’t want to cut spending after all. What does that word “responsible” mean anyhow?
3. Unexpected. Surprised. Why do we keep hearing this term from our economic so-called experts. Does snake oil ring a bell?
4. Decisively put.
5. Short eyes?
6. A trillion?
7. Looking forward to that Turing-ish test.
8. The future of photo-journalism?
9. Here’s your local not-very-scary Tea Party. (HT)
10. Gay rights victory in Wisconsin. Although I’d think it’s mostly a women’s rights thing.
11. Speaking of gay rights, … is all the liberal wagging about gay rights just about this dog?

Newsweek and the Washington Post (no members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, they) both have polls that put schools in Red states at the head of the class.

When it come to excellence in education, red states rule — at least according to a panel of experts assembled by Tina Brown’s Newsweek.  Using a set of indicators ranging from graduation rate to college admissions and SAT scores, the panel reviewed data from high schools all over the country to find the best public schools in the country.

The results make depressing reading for the teacher unions: the very best public high schools in the country are heavily concentrated in red states.

Three of the nation’s ten best public high schools are in Texas — the no-income tax, right-to-work state that blue model defenders like to characterize as America at its worst.  Florida, another no-income tax, right-to-work state long misgoverned by the evil and rapacious Bush dynasty, has two of the top ten schools.

Newsweek isn’t alone with these shocking results.  Another top public school list, compiled by the Washington Post, was issued in May.  Texas and Florida rank number one and number two on that list’s top ten as well.

There’s something else interesting about the two lists: on both lists only one of the top ten public schools was located in a blue state.  (Definition alert: on this blog, a blue state is one that voted for John Kerry in 2004; red states cast their electoral votes for Bush.)

There were no top ten schools on either list from blue New England states like Massachusetts, Vermont and Connecticut.  Nor were there any in the top 25.  By contrast, Alabama made both the Newsweek and the Washington Post top ten.  Only two public schools from these states made the Washpost top fifty list; zero made it into Newsweek‘s elite.  150 years after the Civil War, South Carolina is kicking New England’s rear end when it comes to producing great public schools.

More interesting details at the link. So what are the implications of these list?

Defenders of the high tax, high regulation, highly unionized model of state governance that characterizes the blue states like to point to their higher quality of government services as justification for the taxes they pay and the regulations they accept.

Let those crackers and hillbillies in the red states wallow in their filth and their ignorance, say proud upholders of the blue state model.  We blue staters believe in things like quality education — and that costs money.

In theory, perhaps, but in practice the extraordinary achievement of so many red state schools strongly supports the idea that blue state governance is no friend to excellence in education.  Having low taxes and governors descended from George H. W. Bush seems to offer students more hope than having high taxes and strong teacher unions. At the very least, the rankings suggest that blue state taxes and management philosophies aren’t knocking the stuffing out of their allegedly underfunded and poorly run red state competitors.

Indeed, taxes are the payment for living in a free society, but, as with many things, it can be overdone, or not done well. Cutting taxes, or shifting revenue, to put dollars (perhaps fewer dollars) into better programs is not cutting the budget on the backs of the poor.

I’m kind an outsider on the Evolution ID debate and don’t follow it closely, because I don’t think evolution is anywhere near as important a science/issue as it is made out to be, e.g., it is not a cornerstone by or lens through which the how’s and why’s of biological data need to be seen. From my point of view (and a view oddly enough shared by at least one NOVA program) is that the ID critique of the evolutionary model proposed by the genetic error/adaptive selection model is one of time. The ID critique from that point of view is that the changes seen should take longer than they have absent other mechanisms. The standard GE/AS models have no substantial riposte to that because neither side has a predictive methodology. Questions like: Given an isolated flightless population what is the expectation value for the duration you’d have to wait before flight would be developed by that population? Or, Given a isolated population with no light, what are the expectaion values for the time for loss of all sight organs and functions? Or Given a isolated population with an excess of right handed sugars, what is the time to develop digestion of the same? Neither ID nor GE/AS has any clue/method for calculating an answer to that. 

In that mode, it seems that an interesting tack for experimentation on that would be to develop data points. Stress populations and figure out how long it would take the population to develop a response. That is develop data points and methods to begin building a heuristic model to answer the above questions. It seems to me that small table top populations of organisms could be created which in the main have very fast generational times and consequently the possibilities for adapative responses. This could in turn give some data points for developing descriptive formula for which a theory which describes them might be hung.

This (feels?) like a theme/meme I’ve run into many times. Quoting from here:

There is much to be said about shame, but I struggle with the search for antidotes.  Those who make us feel shame are also most likely to chide us for suffering from it.  Part of Shelley’s point is that at the least, misrecognition of shame is to be avoided.  And some of the sources she identifies in her comment are the product of the wrong ideals; for example, receiving government assistance is a source of shame in a culture in which people with lucky and uneventful lives hold up extreme individualism and self-sufficiency as an ideal for everyone, while fancying they live up to this ideal.

Focus on the italicized (italics mine) sentence. Surely those who feel themselves not in the group of those “making us feel shame” are the ones who will be empathetically trying to assist those feeling said shame to get past, get over, and not feel that shame. Which in turn concentrates attention on that shame … making it felt. It might be just as likely that those who notice, empathise and try to rid us of our shame just plain make it worse … and possibly are even more prevalent than those who would “chide us” for it.

And who “makes anyone” feel shame? Shame, it seems to me, comes from a shared recognition of a failure to hold to a communal standard? No individual can make a shared understanding occur or create a communal standard. Only an extreme individualist might hold this as the fault of an individual. Right?

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). 

1. Art forgetting beauty.
2. Feel safer now?
3. Not a land shark.
4. A suggestion that malfeasance (or incompetence) was a strategy.
5. Streeeettttchsh the chicken.
6. I’m with the blogger on this, you run into a parked car, it’s your own damn fault.
7. Uncertainty and hiring. Ya think?
8. A homily for our times.
9. Or … if you have a modern viewpoint on the worth of a vow taken.
10. 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.
11. Art and autism.
12. It’d be nice if our government said it too … and heck not just talked the talk, but y’now walked the walk. 
13. If you find offense in that picture, you need take a sanity check.
14. A link to a good post, and Krugman keeps his ideological blinders on.
15. Attacking the straw man.
16. 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.

In Detroit, two armed and masked men attempted to rob a Walgreens at 4:30 am. However, pharmacist Jeremy Hoven responded by drawing his concealed handgun and firing at the robbers. They fled.

Hoven’s former Walgreens colleagues were oh so grateful for his possibly saving their lives that night. I say “former” colleagues because Walgreens thanked Hoven by firing him.

In Seattle, pharmacist Michael Donohue was confronted by a hooded robber demanding OxyContin which, evidently, has become a hot item for those interested in abusing drugs. However, Donohue responded by drawing his Glock 19 and pointing it at the robber. The robber fled (notice a pattern here?).

You might think that, with so many pharmacies out there, that some of them are bound to be targeted for robbery. Michael Donohue could tell you about that, for it seems that the incident describe above occurred only two hours after he identified (in a police lineup) a man who had held up his pharmacy previously.

In this CNN video report on the story, note the ending in which some pharmacies have taken to posting signs indicating that they do not carry OxyContin. If only it were as simple as putting up a sign. In an interview on Armed American Radio, Donohue tells of a pharmacist friend who was killed in a hold-up and of another colleague who insures that he always has a supply of OxyContin on hand, for would-be robbers.

As point of fact, it should be noted that any form of self-defense training, especially that involving the use of firearms, should also include knowledge of the laws pertaining to the use of deadly force. Another pharmacist, in Oklahoma City, is now in prison for murder after shooting a robber in his pharmacy.

That’s where Greece is.

ATHENS/LUXEMBOURG (Reuters) – Prime Minister George Papandreou asked Greeks on Sunday to support austerity steps and avoid a "catastrophic" default, as European finance ministers discussed extending tens of billions of euros of aid to Athens.

Addressing the Greek parliament, Papandreou appealed for the nation to accept deeply unpopular tax hikes, spending cuts and privatisation plans which international donors have demanded as a condition for the aid.

"The consequences of a violent bankruptcy or exit from the euro would be immediately catastrophic for households, the banks and the country’s credibility," Papandreou said at the start of a confidence debate on his new crisis cabinet.

Greek officials have said the country will face default in mid-July if the European Union and the International Monetary Fund do not hand over a 12 billion euro tranche of emergency loans by then.

But when that happens, the passengers insist that the train keep moving anyway.

Athenians used to stop off at Syntagma Square for the shopping, the shiny rows of upmarket boutiques. Now they arrive in their tens of thousands to protest. Swarming out of the metro station, they emerge into a village of tents, pamphleteers and a booming public address system.

Since 25 May, when demonstrators first converged here, this has become an open-air concert – only one where bands have been supplanted by speakers and music swapped for an angry politics. On this square just below the Greek parliament and ringed by flashy hotels, thousands sit through speech after speech. Old-time socialists, American economists just passing through, members of the crowd: they each get three minutes with the mic, and most of them use the time alternatively to slag off the politicians and to egg on their fellow protesters.

And Don Surber does some digging and notes that Nobel-Prize-winning, former Enron advisor Paul Krugman was all behind the taxing and spending in Europe because deficits didn’t matter. But all of a sudden, for Greece, now, they do, according to that same Krugman. But since the solution is to do precisely the opposite of what he’s told us in the past, he won’t supply his answer to the crisis. This time. He’ll just lecture the US to do the same things that Greece did that got them into this mess.

Sometimes it seems he deserved that prize in Economics as much as Obama deserved his prize in Peace.

Good morning.

1. Of West and East (rites).
2. Even if the supposition that if we’re just using dones it isn’t war … is it even true?
3. One of the big reasons liberals and conservatives can’t talk. Liberals slam the door before the conversation starts, see?
4. 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.
5. Academic fudging.
6. Public/private schools for the children of politicians.
7. Selecting for dumb.
8. Chrisitanity, salvation and the individual.
9. Flip flops and the President? Say it ain’t so!
10. A media member attempts to insult Ms Palin, fails.
11. I read that story … probably 35+ years ago.
12. Is it naive to think that this would end the struggle and now just move the boundary of said same struggle.
13. Dangerous things for kids.
14. Abortion and choice … and consequences.

It seems that, in their zeal to keep America safe, TSA will leave no one untouched. In yet another absurd, yet politically correct, incident we find a 15 year-old girl randomly selected for full-body scanning, as well as a subsequent full-body assault pat-down. This time, however, the girl has written about her experience.

When the dirty deed was done, the agent indicated we could leave. No explanation, no apology.

I was no longer even remotely happy. I felt dirty — like a criminal. Except criminals are told what they’ve done wrong and they’re read their rights.

We ran to the departure gate, but my plane had left for Florida without me. We had to wait at Midway another six hours for the next flight.

During our wait, my mother and I sat quietly — each of us fearing for the future of a country where you can be singled out and humiliated for no reason whatsoever.

Indeed, a free society should understand that such freedom also brings with it the chance of injury by those abusing the freedom society, as a whole, enjoys. Safety, in theory and in practice, is not a result of randomness. In other words, the mindset of being prepared is grounded on the notion that one cannot predict when and where such preparedness will have to be exercised. For example, when driving I do not latch my seat belt on random occasions or when I think I may need it. Or when I pump gas or visit the ATM I do not assess the surroundings and people around me on a random basis. And while an assault can come from anyone there are certainly indicators that should send up warning flags.

As if this incident isn’t bad enough we now find that, after a video of a woman’s hysterical (albeit staged) reaction during a TSA pat-down, the TSA was reviewing its policy of the public photographing and videoing in their checkpoint areas. This has caused some to worry that the government will attempt to ban photography at security screening areas.

Do you think your safety, or that of your family, is worth submitting to increased government restrictions?

The Dalai Lama calls himself a Marxist.

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.

Obama finally figures out, "Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected." Which is one big reason why the stimulus didn’t stimulate.

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.

When even actor Aston Kutcher comes to the aid of Sarah Palin, you know the media has gone way too far.

And speaking of which (click for a larger version):

u no wat im sayin?
In We Don’t Need Know Education, Mike Adams laments the writing (and speaking) quality of today’s average university student.

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.

###

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?

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I’m OK, You’re OK; but I can’t tie my shoes
From Jerry Weinberger,

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.

###

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.

Interesting. He also mentions Daniel Pink’s book, A Whole New Mind: Why Right Brainers Will Rule the Future, which predicts a “free agent economy” in this new world economic order we’ve found ourselves in.

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?

Yeah… I know. Where’s the fun in that?

Good morning.

1. Quibbles over some terms.
2. Movements on Malta.
3. US decline.
4. Southern Baptists go to hell … in a topical sense.
5. Links to the whole saga here.
6. 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.
7. Oh, and here’s a pointed rebuttal to the point that the Libyan action isn’t one of war. 
8. Van Gough interprets Tolkein.
9. Jesus as that great insane moralizer. Wait … what!?
10. 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. 
11. 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.
12. I’m not an Apple fan … but here’s a defense against the lastest salvo against them.
13. Empathy, a typical Democrat meme, turned against our not-clearly-empathic President.
14. Rape and war, kind of like the “it’s for the children” tax and spend refrain.

And no, this is meant not bo be a definitive answer for y’all. However, recently the Weekend Fisher has written a short post comparing it to losing face. 

Recently in a Dogmatic theology class a quote from, if I recall, one of the Cappadoccian fathers had offered that your sin “like” a veil being drawn between you and God. People in the class reacted positively, as if this was interesting and insightful way of stating it. However, this was for me problematic, because my understanding was that sin was basically defined pretty much in that way. So the question might be why is that an interesting observation if it is also basically the definition for sin. A week later, our instructor came back with a definition for sin that she managed to find, which was that sin is “taking your attention away from God.” 

So, for y’all what is your working definition for what is this thing called sin? 

Good morning.

1. Capture and regulation by the dynamic duo, here and here.
2. Why do “history related gaffes weigh heavily” on these and similar gaffes by, say, the President? 
3. This reminds me of a homily by Isaac the Syrian which praised the passions (which are usually put in a negative light).
4. 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.
5. The Lebonese reaction to the discovery of the idenity of “Gay Girl”.
6. So, what does tending cows mean? Besides that the person using that phrase has never worked with cows.
7. More Democrat stupidity, proving mostly that the Democrat elite at least have been relatively untouched by the recession.
8. 99% perspiration.
9. A categorization of Frank-Dodd for the books.
10. Remember when Obamacare was market driven?