Friday, January 21. 2011
 Can We Trust the GOP? -The Republicans have retaken the House, but that doesn’t mean you should expect the government to get any smaller.
Congress: Replacement Takes Shape
From Bookworm:
The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize recipient gave a state dinner in honor of the leader of China.
The 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Liu Xiaobo, is imprisoned in China.
All conclusions are obvious.
From Shrinkwrapped's discussion of Mark Rudd:
The great problem for the Left is that they have failed spectacularly. The Soviet Union is now a kleptocracy surviving off oil; China is a State run Corporation; Cuba can barely feed itself and its much vaunted healthcare system is a shambles for all but the well connected who can obtain western (Capitalist) medical care; Venezuela is going off a cliff despite its oil; everywhere Socialism has been tried it has failed to do anything but terrorize and consign its people to perdition.
Video: Jeb Bush on Disrupting the Education Monopoly. As they say, if his surname were Jones he'd be a contender.
The Culture is Cracking: A Return to Toughness
Pic is from Pico ski area in Vermont. Great fun to ride up to those mountaintops on oil power, and to whizz down on gravity power. Thrills and chills. Thanks to globalistical warmening caused by climate models, winter is even more fun now with more cold and more snow.
 I tend to believe that ordinary public education, with all of its flaws, shortcomings, and loony political agendas, generally does a pretty good job overall from K-12.
They did OK with me. I turned out literate and mathematically-literate (but I have to give my parents lots of credit for that too. My idea of a Dad was a tall guy with either a book, a chainsaw, a shovel, or a hammer in his hand. A cigarette, also.).
Well-motivated, bright, and well-disciplined kids can learn all they need there to get a good start, and if they are truly motivated and curious and in pursuit of mastery, they will take what is offered as far as they want on their own time. That's the whole point - to offer a foundation.
The challenge for school rankings (which is what school boards care a lot about) is the kids who are not in that category. They drag down the ranking, and thus property values. It's quite obvious that many if not most kids do not find academic learning to be of particular interest, even something as basic to life as algebra. Our schools aren't "failing;" our expectations are the problem.
Most kids are neither scholarly nor studious (girls are more inclined to sit than boys), and the latest stats that many or most kids learn little in college confirms that. College is whatever somebody makes of it, like everything in life.
When people talk about reforming schools, they generally are talking about trying to "meet the needs" of those who aren't very interested, talented, pushed, encouraged, or able - for whatever reasons. For them who wants it, basic eddication ain't expensive at all. For them who don't want it in youth, they can go to the internets or the library and learn all they want when they are older and more interested in things. For kids, the internets are a total time-waster and brain-killer, same as TV used to be. Well, if you have the Britannica online, maybe that might be an exception. I was raised to always review the Britannica before venturing into any new topic, for the overview and context.
So who thinks they are smart enough to change schools? Got Dough? How Billionaires Rule Our Schools.
These people don't have a clue.
OK, gentle readers. We'll put the banner blurb back ASAP. We never imagined that it had any impact. I guess it's a permanent feature.
Still working on improving our format, though - and our banner which needs work! However, we work with a Stone Age system which, like a 1925 tractor, is rugged but not very adaptable.
Thursday, January 20. 2011
Many have heard about the latest kerfuffle at the American Psychiatric Association, which has decided to eliminate Narcissistic Personality Disorder from their next DSM edition (the DSM V). They have also eliminated some other personality disorders.
I really do not care what those clinical researchers on those committees vote for or against, because their view of the world is not mine.
The reason things like the DSM have little meaning to me is because their "diagnoses" have no internal validity (and, indeed, they focus more on consensual validity - meaning that docs can agree on a label - than internal validity, which they feel could be either unattainable, or too "theoretical"). Regardless of its origin, it all comes out in the DSM cookbook as "Anxiety Disorder, Panic Type" or something like that.
For example, let's say there are as many pathways to panic attacks as there are people who have this nasty symptom. Some of it might be inherited, some acquired, most some mix - and all embedded in a personality of a certain structure (which is our way of saying predictability).
This idea, I believe, is to make Psychiatry so "scientific" that the doc can then refer to the latest therapeutics manual and decide what medicine to offer. To my thinking, this is "pseudo-medical." Anxiety, in my view, is a symptom and not a "disorder." Analogous to a fever. Thus saying somebody has an Anxiety Disorder is not the end point of diagnosis - it's the beginning of a search for understanding.
What's the fever (or OCD or sex obsession or eating disorder) coming from? That's what I want to do the detective work on, one person at a time.
Docs like me prefer to work in depth, and find the DSM exasperatingly superficial and reductionistic.
The Last Psychiatrist discusses further: Narcissism Out Of The DSM-- And Into The Open
We used to feature a weekly Bob music video, with lyrics, as a "Free Ad for Bob,", but they have all been taken away from YouTube. However, in cleaning out my image closet I did find a few Bob pics to post:
Continue reading "Cleaning out the Bob Closet: A few pics"
I proposed a bit of Latin to make us appear more intelligent than we are. My proposal:
Fortunatus sum! Pila mea de gramine horrido modo in pratum lene recta volvit!
(For the ignorant mouth breathers and gun-and-Bible clingers, it translates roughly Isn't that lucky! My ball just rolled out of the rough and onto the fairway!)
Fact is, BD and I agreed (provisionally) that it might be better simply to show what Maggie's is than to have to say what we are, hence the (provisional) removal of our age-olde blurbe. They told us, in writing class, "Show it, don't say it." Or did they say "Depict it..."?
From Bastiat's What is Seen and What is Not Seen. It's basically The Law of Unintended Consequences:
There is only one difference between a bad economist and a good one: the bad economist confines himself to the visible effect; the good economist takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen.
Yet this difference is tremendous; for it almost always happens that
when the immediate consequence is favorable, the later consequences are
disastrous, and vice versa. Whence it follows that the bad economist
pursues a small present good that will be followed by a great evil to
come, while the good economist pursues a great good to come, at the risk
of a small present evil.
Topic comes up via Williamson's What Is Seen and Unseen: Obamacare Edition, which begins:
The Democrats’ strategy on Obamacare is cynical, and kind of
embarrassing: “Meet Jimmy, who will get something from the health-care
bill. How dare you take it away?” But there is the seen and there is the unseen. The beneficiaries of Obamacare are easy to find. They are what is seen. What is unseen?
In Norway, an Awakening to the Islamist Danger: Islamists have made no secret of their desire to impose sharia law on the country.
SDA always quotes "Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends."
Wednesday, January 19. 2011
Schniederman: Should she confess to her husband?
What's your opinion?
There is more " nigger" in Yale's Rap Encyclopedia than there is in Mark Twain's Huck Finn.
From his Dependence Day:
Insofar as the world functions at all, it’s due to the Britannic inheritance. Three-sevenths of the G7 economies are nations of British descent. Two-fifths of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council are—and, by the way, it should be three-fifths: The rap against the Security Council is that it’s the Second World War victory parade preserved in aspic, but, if it were, Canada would have a greater claim to be there than either France or China. The reason Canada isn’t is because a third Anglosphere nation and a second realm of King George VI would have made too obvious a truth usually left unstated—that the Anglosphere was the all but lone defender of civilization and of liberty. In broader geopolitical terms, the key regional powers in almost every corner of the globe are British-derived—from Australia to South Africa to India—and, even among the lesser players, as a general rule you’re better off for having been exposed to British rule than not: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados?
We linked the hysterical HHS scare report this morning. As a corrective, via Front Page's informative Obama’s “Death Panel” Moment,
As Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the conservative Cato Institute rightly pointed out, only about 1% of Americans are ever denied health care coverage due to pre-existing conditions. In fact, a HHS survey administered in 2001 (yes, the same HHS) “found that…only 1 percent of Americans had ever been denied health insurance.”
Medical insurance companies do not deny coverage for most things, but they will deny coverage for the most chronic and expensive ongoing or imminently fatal illnesses. That's one reason to get a job with group coverage: the actuaries know how to handle risk.
The real challenge is life insurance, which is best obtained before you ever get the flu, or God forbid, a major carbuncle.
A Brooklyn College Political Science graduate student enrolled in a Middle East course offered at Brooklyn College for this Spring. The newly hired adjunct professor for the course is Kristofer Petersen.
Dismayed after doing some online search on the newly-hired adjunct professor, the student wrote on January 12 to the Department Chair:
Mr. Kristofer Petersen is an active partisan of Palestinians in Gaza. As a recent graduate student, he has published his views in one of the most virulent pro-Palestinian forums and elsewhere, and I have found little else in his online record displaying either balance or a wider scholarly understanding of Israel and the Palestinians… His writings and associations point to an apparent one-sidedness with regards to the Middle Eastern issue of Israel and Palestinians.
Kristofer Petersen’s own description of his background includes: “Outside the academy, I worked for some time as a human rights activist in Gaza and the West Bank and I still maintain close contact with the Palestinian activist community.”
The student points out Electronic Intifada as the venue for two of Petersen’s writings and quotes a pro-Palestinian activist and journalist, Ray Hanania, Member of the National Board of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who wrote, “Electronic Intifada, [is] a place where hypocrisy is the norm, factual inaccuracies are common place, and anger and hatred drive their mission….And they are the first to denounce the killing of Palestinians, but never denounce the killing of Israelis.” (NGO Monitor has a Fact Sheet on Electronic Intifada. The Dutch government told an interfaith organization it funds that it may cut off funding if it continues funding Electronic Intifada.)
For that matter, the Israel-Palestinian dynamics are a relatively small part of issues in the Middle East. As the WikiLeaks revealed, the principal Arab state preoccupation is threats from Iran. (BBC Middle East editor: “Now their own people can see that in private they are saying the same things about Iran as many Israelis and neo-conservative Americans.”)
Petersen is preoccupied with the Palestinian narrative, as evident in his syllabus on the course, Politics of the Middle East: “the course is structured around the broad theme of identity and will be conducted at two levels: (1) a macro level which focuses on the Arab Middle East in general—and does not include details about Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan or Pakistan—and (2) a micro level which focuses specifically on Israel/Palestine.”
There are two required readings in Petersen’s course syllabus.. The first is The Many Faces of Political Islam: Religion and Politics in the Muslim World by Mohammed Ayoob, who concludes writing:
Above all, it is the unstinted and unquestioning American support to Israel, especially to its policy of continued occupation of and settlement within Palestinian lands conquered in 1967, that demonstrates to politically conscious Muslims that the United States is committed to treating Muslims and Arabs not only with insensitivity but with utter contempt.
Ayoob footnotes John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt and Rashid Khalidi, strident critics of Israel.
Continue reading "Gaza Defender Hired To Teach Middle East At Brooklyn College"
You can ignore reality, but reality will not ignore you.
Dr. Sanity, in PREDICTING BEHAVIOR AND PREVENTING TRAGEDY
The intensity does seem strange, doesn't it? Makes you wonder whether there's more going on there than ordinary partisan politics. Robin of Berkley has some ideas.
Tuesday, January 18. 2011
 As you probably know, we're losing our wonderful, dim-able, natural-warm-light-able incandescent bulbs over the next few years. Some states are jumping the federal gun and are already planning on banning 100-watters by the end of the year, and we'll presume 75- and 60-watters will soon follow.
Now, you could write an angry, passionate letter to your Congresscritter and that might, indeed, have a small impact. But I have a better idea. A tried and true idea used by many of the greatest thinkers and persuaders in history:
Exploitation.
One of the reasons the word hideous applies to the Environmental Protection Agency is the way they go so overboard in their 'toxic level' figures. The problem is manyfold.
First, there's the same built-in bias from the scientists testing these things that we see in the global warming industry. Their job isn't to determine if something is safe; they've been instructed to find out how safe it isn't.
And they're certainly not going to risk being wrong and facing legal repercussions, so they're going to multiply any 'fudge factor' by 10 — just to be on the safe side.
Likewise, the administrative arm of the EPA isn't going to put its legal ass on the line, so they're going to reduce the acceptable level by another factor of 10 — just to be on the safe side. After all, as they'll hurriedly tell you, children's lives are at stake.
As a result, whereas 300 parts per million of Ingredient X is perfectly safe for the human body, the official EPA number ends up being something completely ridiculous like 20 parts per million.
One chemical that's been in the news recently is the mercury dust found in fluorescent light bulbs. Numerous experts agree that the minuscule 5 milligrams of mercury dust in a curly bulb poses no danger, whatsoever, to human beings should the bulb break. Haul out the vacuum cleaner, sweep things up, get on with your life.
EPA, meet the petard:
If you would be so kind, please hoist thineself upon one.
Though the amount is tiny, 5 milligrams of mercury is enough to contaminate 6,000 gallons of drinking water, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
That's right. The wise, careful scientists at the EPA have determined that mercury dust is right up there with plutonium on the toxicity chart and what amounts to five grains of pollen is enough to (here's that word) contaminate a body of water the size of a small swimming pool. By this logic, if a crate of curly bulbs ever fell off a cargo ship in Boston, they'd have to close down the Atlantic Ocean.
The article I'm quoting from goes on at length:
Low level mercury exposure can cause tremors, mood shifts, sleeplessness, muscle fatigue, and headaches. High level or extended length exposure can lead to learning disabilities, altered personality, deafness, loss of memory, chromosomal damage, and nerve, brain, and kidney damage, as stated by the EPA. There is a particular risk to the nervous systems of unborn babies and young children.
It then rambles on about the environmental dangers of mercury, the danger to animals, and every word of it 100% true when it comes to real contamination — and thus not one word of it has anything to do with curly light bulbs.
But, because of the EPA's excessive guidelines on what the toxicity level is for mercury dust, they're literally forced to write such articles. As a result, more people — who are clueless about the subject otherwise — have it drilled into them what a danger curly bulbs pose, and they'll pay a little more attention when that Republican candidate on the 2012 ticket starts talking about repealing the ban on incandescents.
In other words, articles like this should be encouraged.
After all, children's lives are at stake. Just ask anyone.
An exploitative idea on saving the aforementioned children's lives — not to mention our own sanity — is below the fold. If you want to make a stand for incandescent light bulbs, here's an effective way.
Continue reading "On thine own petard"
A pal just bought this rugged machine for his hunting and getaway place in upstate New York. He's been fixing up the old leaky farmhouse for a couple of years. Nice to see a Maggie's Farm logo on it - naw, too bad - it's just a wide-assed Massey-Ferguson:
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Bumpersticker from Vanderleun's 
Bob Dylan Has Six More Books Left In Him
Where Did the Korean Greengrocers Go? - 
The Englishman is all about milk right now: