Random Rantings

I need to make dinner and then get to my linear algebra course, so here are some topics I'd love to spend more time on but can't today!

Have you heard about the deaf 3-yr-old whose school said he has to change the way he signs his name because part of the gesture looks like the "bang-bang" gesture that all boys make with their hands?  Incidentally, the boy's name is Hunter:

A Nebraska school district wants a 3-year-old deaf boy to change the way he signs his name because they say the gesture makes his hands look like weapons, the boy's family claims.

The district, in Grand Island, about three hours west of Omaha, has a policy that forbids kids bringing to school "any instrument ... that looks like a weapon," local station KOLN reported.

According to the report, Hunter Spanjer signs his name by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then wagging his hands, which the school says is not appropriate. link

The school district denies this:

Grand Island Public Schools officials declined to discuss the case, but issued a statement to FoxNews.com in which they denied requiring any student to change how his or her name is signed...

Jack Sheard, a spokesman for the district, said district officials — who have reportedly received hundreds of angry phone calls, emails and even death threats — are working with Spanjer’s family.  link

Exactly how are they working with the family, if there's no problem?  If he can sign his given name, what problem is there to "work with"?

A few of us were talking about this at lunch today, and the consensus is that the school district will buckle by Friday.

Next topic:
Remember a few years ago when Eric Holder said that we as a nation were afraid to hold discussions of race?  Well, it's certainly not hard for certain people in a certain political party to talk about race, as they bring up every chance they get, but this is pretty much how we discuss race in a school environment:

Teachers can’t discuss intelligence or racial differences in “behavior, focus or drive,” Morrison writes. If black or Hispanic students score below average, it must be due to “racism, oppression, cultural differences and textbooks.”  White or Asian students who don’t learn must be victims of “poor teaching methods, run-down school buildings, or lazy and uncaring teachers.” Above all, “students are never to blame if they misbehave, fail to study, or can’t understand the curriculum.”

Poor performance is never caused by culture...or perhaps I'm judging poor performance from a white middle-class perspective.  Damn me.

And while we're on the subject of race, Instapundit first quotes Roger L. Simon:

Racism is stalking the Republican Convention in Tampa. But it’s not from the Republicans. It’s from the mainstream media.

First it was MSNBC treating convention speakers Artur Davis, Mia Love, and Ted Cruz like nonpersons. And now it’s Yahoo! Washington Bureau Chief David Chalian getting caught on an ABC webcast saying Mitt Romney would be “happy to have a party when black people drown.”

Chalian, not surprisingly, was fired almost immediately when the word got out, but the climate in which he would make such an insane statement is very much alive and well. Why would anyone dream of saying such a thing in a semi-public situation if he didn’t feel safe and among friends?

The left/liberal need to think Republicans and conservatives racists is more than just projection. At this point, it is nothing short of a mental illness. It is so far divorced from reality, it has to be pathological. No longer are these people able to observe reality with anything close to impartiality. We are not in the world of politics, ladies and gentlemen. We are in the world Freud, Jung, Adler, and people bouncing off walls.

Then Instapundit quotes from a reader who emailed him:

The sheer pathology that Roger Simon highlights may well be one of the biggest stories of this election season. It’s becoming hard to ignore it and becoming more apparent to a larger number of people. At the same time, intended victims are less likely to be cowed.

Democrats and the left have lazily relied on the power of ad hominem coupled with race for the better part of 40 years now. The power of that was bound to diminish with passing time and generations. We’re seeing it now and also seeing that Democrats, and the left generally, have done nothing to prepare for that day. They are desperate, because they have nothing else to offer as rebuttal in policy disputes. Nothing.

This is the price to paid for 40 years of intellectual stasis on the left.

When he jokes that NBC must stand for "No Black Conservatives", the days of playing the race card are indeed numbered for our friends on the left. They've been shouting "fire" in that crowded theater for 40 years now, it's time to make them stop.

Update, 8/31/12:  Hunter Spanjer's school district buckled sooner than we expected.  Good!