Culturally Sensitive Perversions

This one's kinda funny:

The U.S. Army got itself into an embarrassing situation recently, when it was revealed that a new cultural sensitivity pamphlet had been distributed containing some explosive advice. Among the many things troops were advised not to talk to their Afghan colleagues or students about were; homosexuality, sex with children, and abusing women. All three practices are common in Afghanistan, especially the southern areas where most American troops operate.

Yeah, you definitely want to read the entire (short) article at the link.

Less Empathy, Not More

In our politically-correct world, you'd expect people at least to fake the "right" answer, but no, honesty shone through:

Today's college students are not as empathetic as college students of the 1980s and '90s, a University of Michigan study shows.

The study, presented in Boston at the annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science, analyzes data on empathy among almost 14,000 college students over the last 30 years.

Yes, this report is over two years old, but I doubt much has changed in the interim.

Screw The Rich? Not So Fast!

Well, at least, not so much.  It's still socialist Europe, after all:

Embattled French President Francois Hollande suffered a fresh setback Saturday when France's highest court threw out a plan to tax the ultrawealthy at a 75 percent rate, saying it was unfair.

In a stinging rebuke to one of Socialist Hollande's flagship campaign promises, the constitutional council ruled Saturday that the way the highly contentious tax was designed was unconstitutional. It was intended to hit incomes over €1 million ($1.32 million).

The largely symbolic measure would have only hit a tiny number of taxpayers and brought in an estimated €100 million to €300 million - an insignificant amount in the context of France's roughtly (sic) €85 billion deficit.

With these kinds of people, including our president, it's not about bringing money into the treasury. It's about some warped view of "fairness".

If This Bothered You Lefties Under Bush...

...why does it not bother you under Obama?

By a vote of 73 to 23, the US Senate just voted for the warrantless surveillance of American citizens until 2017.

The vote, set to affirm to eradicate the FAA Sunsets Extension Act of 2012, means we'll be living with Bush-era spy laws for another half decade. In 2007, the Senate voted to grant blanket immunity to companies like AT&T, which conspired with the NSA to monitor American digital conversations without government oversight after 9/11. Today's vote continues that immunity, and provides further carte blanche for the American intelligence-gathering apparatus. Phone calls, texts, and emails are all fair game—and a judge doesn't have to give the OK, so long as it's in the name of counterterrorism. Which is a very easy guise.

Marching Band, Rifle Drill, and Excellence

Based on the language this particular site appears to be Portuguese, but the video is of the Royal Norwegian Guard.  Impressive.

Hiatus!

I'm (probably) taking a break till 2013, so for the next few days you'll get a couple of scheduled posts or "best of" reruns.  Enjoy the end of 2012

This kid rocks.

Freedom

Sometimes people ask me why I value freedom so highly.  If giving up a few freedoms would make life a little easier, they say, why not go for the easy life?

My cerebral answer is that freedom is what drives the human spirit.  We psychologists talk of self-actualizing, they're talking about freedom.  Freedom is the precursor to human growth, it is the essence of what it means to be human.

That's the grand, one-over-the-world answer.  Here's a more practical one:

The Heritage Foundation calculates an Economic Freedom Index annually for countries around the world based on ten factors: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government spending, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom. With the index, one can compare the impact of economic freedom to quality of life measures.

The Heritage Foundation uses the index to break down the nations into five subgroups ranging from free economies to repressed economies. Based on the data, it is possible to compare the subgroups for factors such as average life expectancy, income and happiness. Table 1 shows the subgroups based on the 2010 index compared to the average life expectancy, per capita Gross Domestic Product (Purchasing Power Parity), and the Gallup Happiness Index in the year the economic freedom index was calculated.

Practical evidence of my ethereal belief.  Libs can believe whatever they want, but reality is conservative.

I Do Enjoy Satire

Think the Founders never intended for citizens to have high-powered rifles because all they had was muskets?  Think the 2nd Amendment is "technology-dependent"?  How about the 1st?

There’s a lot more at the link, but clearly, and particularly in light of all of the irresponsible reporting and pontificating on what the Founders intended, by CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and others, it’s time to rein in this out-of-control media. How could the Founders have foreseen cable television, or television at all, in which irresponsible, uneducated, ignorant people could fill Americans’ heads with rapid-fire historical nonsense?

If, just to win this debate with me, you say you'd agree to some curtailing of the 1st Amendment if it meant curtailing the 2nd, then you're a fool who has both of those rights only due to the exertions of men and women better than you are. (with thanks to John Stuart Mill)

A Little Reason About the Connecticut Shooting and Calls For More Firearms Control

Glenn Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and host of the Instapundit web site, has penned what I consider a thoughtful and reasoned column about the aftermath of the shooting.  You may or may not agree with him, but I think you'll have to agree that he's "thoughtful and reasoned", especially considering that he's not calling for anyone to be killed (unlike the gun control crowd):

When Twenty Minutes Is Forever. According to the CNN timeline for the Sandy Hook tragedy, "Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls." Twenty minutes. Five minutes is forever when violence is underway, but 20 minutes -- a third of an hour -- means that the "first responders" aren't likely to do much more than clean up the mess...

Is Hate A Liberal Value? A 20-year-old lunatic stole some guns and killed people. Who's to blame? According to a lot of our supposedly rational and tolerant opinion leaders, it's . . . the NRA, a civil-rights organization whose only crime was to oppose laws banning guns. (Ironically, it wasn't even successful in Connecticut, which has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation)...

Calling people murderers and wishing them to be shot sits oddly with claims to be against violence. The NRA -- like the ACLU, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers or Planned Parenthood -- exists to advocate policies its members want. It's free speech. The group-hate directed at the NRA is ugly and says ugly things about those consumed by it.

He goes on, ending with this:

Ah, yes, the government is broke. And nobody seems to have a plan to deal with it. No wonder they'd rather have us talking about gun control.

Good article.

Obama Administration to California Dept of Education: Screw You!

Obama loves the money his campaign can raise here, and he loves the electoral votes, and he loves his popularity, and he loves our high taxes.

He doesn't like our schools, though, or our elected officials:

California has been denied a waiver from federal sanctions associated with the No Child Left Behind law, state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson said in a news release Friday.

"It is disappointing that our state's request – which enjoyed such strong support from parents, teachers, administrators, and education advocates across California – has apparently been rejected," Torlakson said in a statement.

Those who thought that NCLB was a way to privatize our schools, well, you were wrong. It might be a way to force the state, or maybe even the feds, to take them over!

I especially like the comment, as I type this it's the only one, after the article:

Maybe CA should let ALL schools be taken over by the state. Let the state fix them. Let the state figure out how to get the non English speakers up to grade level since Brown and the Dems are so hep on treating all illegals like citizens. Let the state figure out how to make all the poor, under achieving students go to school everyday and study without parental involvement. It seems they believe it's the teacher's responsibility to get all the kids to school everyday, do their homework, and behave themselves at school.

Shoot, we're feeding them with tax dollars anyway. Why not force the teachers to be their parent too.

Christmas Day

I watched a healthy portion of the pope's Christmas Mass last night, finally going to bed at 1am.  St. Peter's isn't as impressive on tv as it is in person, but seeing it again brought back memories of the grandeur.

I hope all the readers here at Right On The Left Coast have (had) a wonderful day, a Merry Christmas, or a joyful celebration of whatever holiday you celebrate :) 

Here's my favorite version of a Christmas song, posted again for at least the third year in a row!

Merry Christmas!

Buon Natale!
Froehliche Weinachten!
Feliz Navidad!
Joyeaux Noel!
Mele Kalikimaka!

I'm scheduling this post in advance because I plan on watching the Pope's Christmas mass.  No, I haven't converted to Catholicism, but I want to see St. Peter's again.

Have a great day!

Jury Duty

Back in October I was scheduled for jury duty, but since I'm a teacher (students are allowed to as well) I was able to push my service date out up to 90 days so I could serve during a scheduled break.  I stated on the form that I'd be available the week of December 24th.  A couple weeks ago I got a new jury summons for that (this) week.

The instructions were to call or check the web site over the weekend to see when my group number would be needed.  When I checked on Saturday the site said that my group would not need to go in on Monday morning, but should call or check at 11:30 to see if we'd need to go in at 1pm.  I checked a little early, and here are the new instructions for my group:

Your group is not needed. Your service is complete. You do not need to check back. Thank you for making yourself available to serve as a juror.

Not complaining!

Vilfredo Pareto's Simple Discovery

When I worked in industry, we used Statistical Process Control to ensure that our manufacturing processes were stable.  We measured output using a variety of charts and could identify if something were going wrong with a process (a blade going bad on a cutter, or perhaps a die wearing out) and could fix the problem before it became severe.

One of the charts we used was called a Pareto Chart; on it we listed the types of errors we got from a specific process, and the quantity of those errors.  The goal was to attack the most common error first.  Turns out that chart was named after Vilfredo Pareto, who's discussed in this article:

With today’s liberals, it is not really about fairness. It is about trying to make people equal who will never be equal. It is what socialism and communism have always striven toward, and it is something their philosophy has never achieved. It can never be achieved.

And that is because people are not equal. Created equal, yes; equal under the law, yes; equal in many ways, yes; but ultimately not equal because people are all different. Despite ecumenical pleas that we are all one, that we are all the same, we really are not.

And neither is the tax situation. Liberals cry that the rich are not paying their share, and they are right about that – just in the wrong direction.

The top one percent of earners pays 40 percent of all income taxes. The top 10 percent pays 70 percent of all taxes. The top 50 percent pays 98 percent. The bottom 50 percent of earners pays two percent.

That is the truth. However, the truth, historically, has always been the biggest enemy of the liberals, socialists and communists.

Their goal has never been to be “fair,” or to make rich people pay a “fair share.” Their goal is to make everyone equal in the egalitarian utopia that socialists have always desired. The trouble is, it usually ends with everyone being equally poor and equally miserable...

When you talk about unfairness and inequality, consider the work of Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian engineer and sociologist turned economist. More than a hundred years ago, he saw disparity and it made him wonder – why was 80 percent of the land in Italy owned by 20 percent of the people? He saw the rich and the poor, and he wondered why some people became rich and some remained poor.

His observations – known as the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule — are worth noting, and apply today as much as they did a hundred or a thousand years ago.

Pareto noted that 80 percent of a company’s profit came from 20 percent of its customers; 80 percent of a company’s sales come from 20 percent of its salesmen, and from 20 percent of its clients; 80 percent of a company’s complaints come from 20 percent of its customers; in his garden, 80 percent of the peas came from 20 percent of the peapods. In other words, 80 percent of achievement comes from the efforts of 20 percent.

The principle has been adapted and expanded by a number of economists in the years after Pareto. Microsoft, for example, did its own study showing that fixing 20 percent of the most reported bugs eliminates 80 percent of errors and crashes. Safety experts know that eliminating 20 percent of hazards prevents 80 percent of injuries. Supervisors know that 20 percent of the work takes 80 percent of the time...

A 1992 study by a United Nations committee found that the richest 20 percent of the world’s population controlled 82 percent of the world’s income, while the poorest 20 percent controlled 1.4 percent (and the poorest 60 percent controlled 5.5 percent). The U.N. didn’t need a study to show that.

It does seem unfair that so many have a lot while so many others have so little. But that is life, and life is unfair. The Democrat liberals and socialists have turned America from a society that praised and rewarded hard work, to a society that scorns and punishes it. We now are a society that has made a cult of worshipping the poor. There’s an old saying that it isn’t a crime to be poor, but it isn’t a great achievement. Well, now it is considered a great achievement...

It was Pareto’s education as a sociologist, where human nature came into the mix, that made him understand why utopian theories didn’t work out in reality.

I found the Pareto Principle on a local level, anytime I had to do a story about any of the high schools my newspapers covered. I noticed that the students at the top of the class were involved in the most activities, while those at the bottom of the class were involved in no activities. That didn’t make sense to me on first glance. The students involved in so many activities, like sports, music, service clubs — shouldn’t they have the lowest grades because they don’t have time to study, and shouldn’t those with no involvement have the highest grades because they have all that free time to study?

No, it was just the opposite. Those who worked the hardest, in an out of the classroom, were the smartest and the most successful.

Just like in real life.

Some things just are.  That doesn't mean they're good or desirable, but a quixotic and ruinously expensive attempt to change them isn't any more so.

Running Out Of Other People's Money

You wouldn't see a piece like this in the American mainstream media, especially in the Age of The One, and it's certainly odd to see it in the British press, but it is, as the British would say, spot on:

The promises that governments are making to their electorates are not just misleading: they are unforgivably dishonest. It will not be possible to go on as we are, or to return to the expectations that we once had. The immediate emergency created by the crash of 2008 was not some temporary blip in the infinitely expanding growth of the beneficent state. It was, in fact, almost irrelevant to the larger truth which it happened, by coincidence, to bring into view. Government on the scale established in most modern western countries is simply unaffordable...

Of course, the moral logic of this principle is absurd. The amount of wealth in an economy is not fixed so that one person having more means that somebody else must have less. But, for the purposes of our problem, it is the fault in the economic logic that is more important. The amount of money that is required to fund government entitlement programmes is now so enormous that it could not be procured by even very large increases in taxation on the “rich”. Assuming that you could get all of the rich members of your population to stand still and be fleeced (rather than leaving the country, as Gérard Depardieu and a vast army of his French brethren are doing), there are simply not enough of them to provide the revenue that a universal, comprehensive benefits system requires. And if all the French rich did stay put, and submit to President Hollande’s quixotic 75 per cent income tax, they would soon be too impoverished to invest in the supply side of the economy, which would undermine any possibility of growth...

There is no way that “taxing the rich” – that irresistibly glib Left-wing solution to everything – can make present and projected levels of government spending affordable...

At some point, we will have to accept that government-funded health care will consist of subsidised core services to be topped up by the patient’s own insurance or personal funds, just as dentistry and opticians’ services are now. Similarly, pension provision will have to be largely the responsibility of the individual. The greatest contribution that government will be able make to these efforts will be in cutting personal taxes, thus leaving people with more money to pay for provision that they will be free to choose for themselves.

No. Next Question.

Is the Ivy League fair to Asian Americans?  Are any so-called selective universities?

Are Ivy League institutions discriminating against Asian Americans by limiting how many are admitted? That's the subject of a debate published this week in the New York Times...

As I see it, we know that even well-intentioned people regularly rationalize discriminatory behavior, that society as a whole is often horrified at its own bygone race-based policies, and that race is so fluid in our multi-ethnic society that no one can adequately conceive of all the ways it is changing; knowing these things, prudence dictates acceptance of the fact that humans aren't equipped to fairly take race into consideration. At various times in history, doing so has nevertheless been a necessity. We're lucky that it isn't a necessity now, and that class-based affirmative action would effectively target the most needy racial minorities in a race-blind way.

To imagine that today's college-admissions officers can step outside the failings of humanity, making subjective judgment calls in secret with racial enlightenment that is unprecedented in human history, is folly. It may have seemed possible and even done more good than harm when America was mostly grappling with black and white. Now that we're asking people to calibrate the "diversity value" of American blacks, Africans, Hispanics, Thais, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Native Americans, and many more besides? The prudent course is acknowledging the limits of our wisdom. Alas, intellectual humility and restraint are not among the Ivy League's virtues.

They do well, so in education circles they're not considered "minorities" and hence can feel the full force of racial discrimination. Logic is not the strong suit of the liberals who create these policies.

Update:  Does anyone truly believe that affirmative action candidates for faculty really are the best instructors a college can get?  No.  Next question.

The problems of such hiring assumptions and practices are so manifold as to make it nearly inconceivable that they should have been implemented across North American universities without any significant protest — but implemented they have been, and most academics I know will admit no serious contradiction between the ideal of equality and the reality of discrimination against white male candidates. It should be self-evident — but is not — that any form of hiring is wrong that does not make merit its first and major criterion. Not only academic departments are harmed by practices that imperil quality; the candidates themselves, who must live with the question of their real qualifications forever undetermined, are placed in a humiliating position. Moreover, department morale is likely to suffer considerably when members see less qualified candidates favored due to non-intellectual factors, with resentments and rivalries an almost inevitable result.

What stands out most in my recollection of that time is the dishonesty of the proceedings. A member of the department who served on a campus-wide committee tasked with developing best practices to promote diversity mentioned one of their recommendations: after a minority candidate is hired, members of the department should take care to tell all their friends of her merit; the equity preference should not be mentioned. The omission hit at the nub of the matter. It was not that individuals were necessarily lying as they offered their various justifications and rationales; many of them believed in what they were doing, at least some of the time. But it was impossible to believe wholeheartedly and without hesitation through all of those strained, compromised, and occasionally ludicrous moments of hedging, half-truth, selective blindness, and forced praise.

No matter one’s commitment to righting past wrongs, one could not avoid recognizing that non-intellectual criteria were being used to hire candidates into positions ostensibly defined by intellectual achievement.

Update #2, 12/24/12:  Here's the racial breakdown for Cal-Berkeley.  I wonder how many of those Asians are affirmative action candidates.  I wonder what their percentages would be if there were no affirmative action at Berkeley.  I heard once, but can't find a citation for it, that someone once told Governor Reagan that without affirmative action our University of California campuses would be overwhelmingly Asian and his response was, "So what?"  I'd like to find out if that anecdote is true or not, and what the context was.

It's Like I Can't Stop

No, I'm not talking about eating sweets, although I very well could be.  I'm actually talking about Christmas shopping!  For no good reason today other than wanting to get out of the house, I went to Target to pick up a bunch of stocking-stuffer-type things for my son.  He's 16, but I still like having a stocking from Santa for him :-)

Sometimes our kids bring out the worst in us.  Sometimes, though, they bring out the best in us.  Christmas can be one of those times.

It Must Be Pretty Bad

"But, but, he has a medical condition, and the workplace has to accommodate him!"

"Or, he can wear charcoal-laced undies."

Whatever the solution is, this selfish idiot isn't so important that everyone else should have to smell his farts:

A federal employee was formally reprimanded this month for excessive workplace flatulence, a sanction that was delivered to him in a five-page letter that actually included a log of representative dates and times when he was recorded “releasing the awful and unpleasant odor” in his Baltimore office.

In a December 10 letter accusing him of “conduct unbecoming a federal officer,” the Social Security Administration employee was informed that his “uncontrollable flatulence” had created an “intolerable” and “hostile” environment for coworkers, several of whom have lodged complaints with supervisors.

The worker, a 38-year-old Maryland resident, reportedly submitted evidence that he suffered from “some medical conditions” that, at times, caused him to be unable to work full days. But a SSA manager noted in the reprimand letter that, “nothing that you have submitted has indicated that you would have uncontrollable flatulence. It is my belief that you can control this condition.”

I'm sure this will end up on a judge's bench, and hope that the judge applies some common sense--which this individual clearly lacks.  Of course his union is springing for the attorney.   Why don't they care about all the other employees?

(My favorite line in the story:  The man was also accused of launching a trio of attacks on September 11.)

Clogging the Arteries

How amazing does this pizza look?

The Double Sensation's outer crust is filled with mozzarella, Parmesan, and cheddar cheese, which oozes out from strategically placed notches all the way around the edge. The smaller crust is stuffed with a chicken sausage that is itself stuffed with bits of cheese. The entire thing is liberally covered in pepper-Alfredo sauce, salsa sauce, smoked chicken, turkey ham, mushrooms, onions, bell peppers and zucchini. This is knife-and-fork pizza, not pick-it-up-and-eat-it-with-your-hands pizza. Also: There's a maraschino cherry on top.

I can feel my arteries hardening just from looking at the picture.

What I Like About Today

The last day before Christmas break is always a fun time.  We used to come back in January and have two weeks left in the semester, so finals hung over everyone's head like a Sword of Damocles.  Not so anymore, and everyone, staff and student alike, gets to enjoy a well-deserved no-school-requirements break.

I teach in an upscale area, and the generosity shown my students and parents always humbles me.  It's very kind. 

Additionally, I love it when former students come back and visit.  I think I had three of them just drop in today, one from college and two from one of our "online" schools.  Facebook keeps me in touch with many former students, but it's still nice to see them in person--and they have no idea how much.

Our first day back at work in January is a teacher work day, so that's when I'll finish grading the final exams and entering those grades.  The semester will start that Tuesday.

I think I'll skip entirely what I don't like about today.  I'm on too much of a high.