Snapchat

Because of proposed budget cuts, our seniors graduated about 3 weeks early this year.  This means that of the 5 classes I teach, 2 are now completely devoid of students and 1 has only 2 students, both juniors, in it.  Final exams for the remaining 2 classes start tomorrow.

The 2 juniors mentioned above took their final exam with the seniors a couple weeks ago so I've had them doing various miscellany--like, for example, "piloting" a new review sheet that I created based on the results of the final exams!  But today we were just talking, and one of them said she was going to send a "snapchat".

What's snapchat? I asked.
It's an app.  You send a picture, the recipient views it, and then the picture disappears.

What is the only purpose of this app?  It's as clear to me as the nose on my face--this app was created so people could send nudie pictures of themselves without having to worry about having the picture forwarded to others!  So-called sexting is not unheard of at our school and that's what came to mind.

When I mentioned that to the students, the one replied with horror that she'd never even thought of that!  Of course I believe her, but I also believe that I'm not the first to divine that particular use of that phone app.

And in case you're wondering, NO, I haven't downloaded it.  :-)

Free Speech and Tolerance

"Free speech and tolerance were only important back when communists and gays were being gone after. Now that the worm has turned, those bourgeois values no longer obtain."
--Glenn Reynolds

What The Heck Are Taxes For?

How's this, from the San Jose Mercury News, for stupidity:

Before the Lincoln High School prom last Saturday night, 16-year-old Sammi McCasland and seven of her friends -- a total of four couples -- decided to take photos with their smartphones at the Japanese Friendship Garden at Kelley Park.

Having duly paid the $6 per vehicle parking fee, the Lincoln students walked toward the bridges and ponds of the friendship garden in search of the right spot for a memory. That's when a San Jose park ranger told them no.

"We get there, and she says, 'Do you guys have a permit?' '' remembered Sammi. "We said 'no.' She said, 'No, you can't take pictures.' ''

The Lincoln kids, part of a wave of promgoers descending on the garden, waited until the park ranger had gone and then took their shots without benefit of the $100 permit...

When I ran this episode past Steve Hammack, the deputy director of parks, recreation and neighborhood services, he said the city's policy was clear.

"We encourage photography in the park and only require a permit when conducted for the purposes of doing business,'' he wrote me by email.

"This situation as you outlined below does not require a permit. I am following up with staff to make sure we are not misrepresenting the requirements for obtaining a permit.''

And that's fair enough. San Francisco, for example, says that permits aren't needed unless the photographer is being paid -- a wedding videographer, for instance.

You can see the reasoning behind that: In a paid gig, the city's grounds are being used as a business backdrop.  

I can't see that at all.  Does San Jose require a permit to photograph City Hall?  Should the National Park Service require a permit to photograph Half Dome, or Old Faithful, or the Lincoln Memorial?  This is yet another example of a government that tries to milk every cent it can out of the people.  Sometimes we call that tyranny.

I heard this on the radio this morning and a good point was made:  when you seek a "permit", you are getting the government's "permission" to do something.  In other words, the government has taken your rights and is selling them back to you.  At that point, what exactly are your rights?

But let's continue with the story, which gets murkier:

Yet it may not be wholly fair to blame the park ranger here. When you look up the city's policies online (www.sanjoseca.gov) the rules appear ambiguous.

Under the "Photo Permit'' section, the city says, "Photo permits are necessary for any type of photography or filming in all city of San Jose parks.''

But an FAQ for photo permits has this question: "Do I have to have a permit for photos if I'm just visiting the park and snapping a few pictures?'' The answer is "No.''So it appears that "snapping a few pictures,'' which is presumably what the promgoers were attempting, is not the same as the "any type of photography'' requiring a $100 permit from the city.

Sometimes, perhaps too often, the law is an ass.  This is why I choose to limit the power of government.

Where Our School District Money Goes

I received the following from a colleague today and was given permission to post it here:

We have run out of money at our school site. We are out of paper for the copy machines. We ran out of money for the student award ice cream social (so teachers spent their own money so kids could still have ice cream). But don’t worry! Free lunches to anyone and everyone all summer long in {our district}. Isn’t Marxist ideology great?!

What might this colleague be talking about?

Free summer lunch program expanding to four District locations

The {school district} is once again offering all children 18 years of age and under a free lunch this summer as part of its popular Summer Fun Café – and this time, the café will be found at four locations throughout the community.

There are no qualifications to receive the free lunch. Students do not have to be enrolled in the {school district}, there are no income requirements and there is no paperwork to complete.

Below are the dates and locations for this year’s program...

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how we roll in California.

Public Universities Are A Public Good, Right?

Especially because they help the poor, right?  I know the president has popularized bashing for-profit schools and universities, but who says the public universities are doing any good, especially for the poor who are held up as beneficiaries?

Many public colleges and universities expect their poorest students to pay a third, half or even more of their families’ annual incomes each year for college, a new study of college costs has found.

With most American students enrolling in their states’ public institutions in hopes of gaining affordable degrees, the new data shows that the net price – the full cost of attending college minus scholarships – can be surprisingly high for families that make $30,000 a year or less.

The numbers track with larger national trends: the growing student-loan debt and decline in college completion among low-income students. 

This president sure likes to create bugaboo-bad-guys, doesn't he?  Does he have any good guys he and his ilk can point to?

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/29/192492/public-colleges-are-often-no-bargain.html#storylink=cpy

The Big Yellow Thing In The Sky

When the facts contradict your expectations, believe the facts.  The facts tell me that we understand way too little about atmospheric science to be jumping to conclusions about Venus-style global warming (and of course the statist solutions that always accompany such conclusions):

The height of the Little Ice Age is generally dated as 1650 to 1850 A.D. The American Revolutionary Army under General George Washington shivered at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-78, and New York harbor was frozen in the winter of 1780. Historic snowstorms struck Lisbon, Portugal in 1665, 1744 and 1886. Glaciers in Glacier National Park in Montana advanced until the late 18th or early 19th centuries. The last River Thames Frost Fair was held in 1814. The Little Ice Age phased out during the middle to late 19th century.

The Little Ice Age, following the historically warm temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from about AD 950 to 1250, has been attributed to natural cycles in solar activity, particularly sunspots. A period of sharply lower sunspot activity known as the Wolf Minimum began in 1280 and persisted for 70 years until 1350. That was followed by a period of even lower sunspot activity that lasted 90 years from 1460 to 1550 known as the Sporer Minimum. During the period 1645 to 1715, the low point of the Little Ice Age, the number of sunspots declined to zero for the entire time. This is known as the Maunder Minimum, named after English astronomer Walter Maunder. That was followed by the Dalton Minimum from 1790 to 1830, another period of well below normal sunspot activity.

The increase in global temperatures since the late 19th century just reflects the end of the Little Ice Age. The global temperature trends since then have followed not rising CO2 trends but the ocean temperature cycles of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). Every 20 to 30 years, the much colder water near the bottom of the oceans cycles up to the top, where it has a slight cooling effect on global temperatures until the sun warms that water. That warmed water then contributes to slightly warmer global temperatures, until the next churning cycle.

Those ocean temperature cycles, and the continued recovery from the Little Ice Age, are primarily why global temperatures rose from 1915 until 1945, when CO2 emissions were much lower than in recent years. The change to a cold ocean temperature cycle, primarily the PDO, is the main reason that global temperatures declined from 1945 until the late 1970s, despite the soaring CO2 emissions during that time from the postwar industrialization spreading across the globe.

The 20 to 30 year ocean temperature cycles turned back to warm from the late 1970s until the late 1990s, which is the primary reason that global temperatures warmed during this period. But that warming ended 15 years ago, and global temperatures have stopped increasing since then, if not actually cooled, even though global CO2 emissions have soared over this period. As The Economist magazine reported in March, “The world added roughly 100 billion tonnes of carbon to the atmosphere between 2000 and 2010. That is about a quarter of all the CO2 put there by humanity since 1750.” Yet, still no warming during that time. That is because the CO2 greenhouse effect is weak and marginal compared to natural causes of global temperature changes...

Britain’s Met Office, an international cheerleading headquarters for global warming hysteria, did concede last December that there would be no further warming at least through 2017, which would make 20 years with no global warming. That reflects grudging recognition of the newly developing trends. But that reflects as well growing divergence between the reality of real world temperatures and the projections of the climate models at the foundation of the global warming alarmism of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Since those models have never been validated, they are not science at this point, but just made up fantasies. That is why, “In the 12 years to 2011, 11 out of 12 [global temperature]forecasts [of the Met Office] were too high — and… none were colder than [resulted],” as BBC climate correspondent Paul Hudson wrote in January.

Global warming was never going to be the problem that the Lysenkoists who have brought down western science made it out to be. Human emissions of CO2 are only 4 to 5% of total global emissions, counting natural causes.

Mt. Pinatubo's eruption in the Philippines released more so-called greenhouses gases in that one Reagan-era eruption than mankind had put into the atmosphere in his entire existence as a species.  If I recall correctly, I read that at the time in the New York Times.

You Can't Say We Didn't Warn You

This comes from the New York Times so you lefties have to take it as gospel:

Say goodbye to that $500 deductible insurance plan and the $20 co-payment for a doctor’s office visit. They are likely to become luxuries of the past.

Get ready to enroll in a program to manage your diabetes. Or prepare for a health screening to determine your odds of developing a costly health condition.

Expect to have your blood pressure checked or a prescription filled at a clinic at your office, rather than by your private doctor.

Then blame — or credit — the so-called Cadillac tax, which penalizes companies that offer high-end health care plans to their employees.

While most of the attention on the Obama administration’s health care law has been on providing coverage to tens of millions of uninsured Americans by 2014, workers with employer-paid health insurance are also beginning to feel the effects. Companies hoping to avoid the tax are beginning to scale back the more generous health benefits they have traditionally offered and to look harder for ways to bring down the overall cost of care...

Proponents of the law say the Cadillac tax is helping bring down costs by making employers pay attention to what their health care costs are likely to be in the long run. “It’s really one of the most significant provisions” in the Affordable Care Act, said Jonathan Gruber, the M.I.T. economist who played an influential role in shaping the law. “It’s focusing employers on cost control, not slashing,” he said.

Cynthia Weidner, an executive at the benefits consultant HighRoads, agreed that the tax appeared to be having the intended effect. “The premise it’s built upon is happening,” she said, adding, “the consumer should continue to expect that their plan is going to be more expensive, and they will have less benefits. ” (emphasis mine--Darren)

Is this what you signed on for with Obamacare?  You thought you were going to get free health care, didn't you?  Remember what Margaret Thatcher said, the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money.

Update, 5/29/13:  Your quality of care will probably go down under Obamacare:

If you live in California and purchase health insurance on the newly created exchange called Covered California, don't expect care at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, the prestigious academic hospital in Los Angeles. That top-drawer care won't be covered by exchange plans. Many Californians will have to give up doctors and hospitals they currently use if they want subsidized coverage.

That's one of the truths omitted from last Thursday's fanfare when Covered California unveiled the plans it will offer starting Oct. 1.

Covered California will be the largest exchange in the nation. So the unveiling attracted nationwide interest. ObamaCare boosters declared victory. But the truth gap between what they claimed and what exchange consumers will actually get is wider than San Francisco Bay. Setting the record straight is important, because the problems in California will be repeated elsewhere.

Maine, for example, hasn't officially announced its exchange plans yet, but already consumers are outraged to learn that they too will have to give up their current doctors and hospitals if they enroll on the exchange.

 Update #2, 5/31/13:  California leads the way!

“The rates submitted to Covered California for the 2014 individual market,” the state said in a press release, “ranged from two percent above to 29 percent below the 2013 average premium for small employer plans in California’s most populous regions.”

That’s the sentence that led to all of the triumphant commentary from the left. “This is a home run for consumers in every region of California,” exulted Peter Lee.

Except that Lee was making a misleading comparison. He was comparing apples—the plans that Californians buy today for themselves in a robust individual market—and oranges—the highly regulated plans that small employers purchase for their workers as a group. The difference is critical...

 It’s great that Covered California released this early the rates that insurers plan to charge on the exchange, as it gives us an early window into how the exchanges will work in a state that has an unusually competitive and inexpensive individual market for health insurance. But that’s the irony. The full rate report is subtitled “Making the Individual Market in California Affordable.” But Obamacare has actually doubled individual-market premiums in the Golden State.

Update #3, 5/31/13:  Who could have predicted this?  I did, a long time ago!

Obamacare may make people with certain lifestyles pay a very real price.

According to new regulations just issued by the Obama Administration, if you smoke, you're overweight, or have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, you could be forced to pay a lot more for health insurance. 

You thought we were joking about being required to eat broccoli.  Not so much.

Hiatus Is Over, And Now I Need To Rest!

I didn't sleep much Friday night, but I was up bright and early Saturday to catch my flight to Las Vegas!

Went with a friend I've known since elementary school.  We stayed at Caesar's Palace--the room was indeed palatial, check out the view!

We kept ourselves busy on Saturday by going up the Stratosphere Tower, watching a performance of the Fountains at Bellagio, and checking out the stores at the Forum Shops and at the Venetian/Palazzo (chosen since we went to Rome and Venice last summer).  While in the Venetian I saw signs that the marine artist Wyland was in the gallery doing signings; I didn't get a signature, but we talked about a couple of his Whaling Walls that I've seen and I got this cool picture with him:

Sunday morning we headed over to Luxor to see the Titanic Exhibit, which was absolutely amazing.  They even have a wall-sized piece of hull plating!

We planned to go hit the swimming pool in the afternoon, but every seat was taken.  Here's a shot of just one of the 7(?) pools in the complex:


The culminating event, and the raison d'etre for the trip, was the Fleetwood Mac concert at the MGM Grand.  I had tickets to see them in late 1982, but Stevie "caught a cold" and when the tour was rescheduled, Sacramento was left off the list.  I've since seen keyboardist/vocalist Christine McVie, guitarist/vocalist Lindsey Buckingham, and singer Stevie Nicks on solo tours, but now, more than 30 years later, I finally got to see Fleetwood Mac (minus Christine, who doesn't tour anymore) as a group.  It was extra special because the concert was on Stevie's birthday :-)
 

It was an early morning today, but we made it back. I'm exhausted--I need to rest after this holiday weekend!

Update:  Oh, I forgot to mention that I had emergency exit row seats on both flights.  Score!

Hiatus!

I felt last night's earthquake--my first thought was, "Dang, that's a loud truck rumbling down the road."  When I realized it wasn't getting any closer or further away, I thought, "That's a loud wind."  But wind doesn't cause my chair to move--and it certainly doesn't cause my walls to move!  That's when I realized it was an earthquake!  By the time I got excited about it, it was all over.  I didn't even feel the aftershock a couple minutes later, but that's not surprising given that the (first) aftershock was much smaller and both were centered about a hundred miles away.

But that's the most exciting thing I have to talk about, and I just did.  So rather than just fill space, I'll let you know I'll be on hiatus until Monday.

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend!

What The Data Tell Us

In this post I identified a problem at our school, a decision that was made without backup data.  I had some students run the numbers yesterday and today, and I've checked their work and it's correct.

And it doesn't look good.  Our "Algebra 1.5" class isn't turning marginal students into excellent students.  It didn't take students unprepared for Algebra 2 and, in a year, turn them into A or B Algebra 2 students in a proportion similar to the excelling students who didn't need or take that intermediate course.

Knowing I'd set the standard high, I lowered it bit.  We then tested to see if the proportions of A's, B's, and C's overall matched that of Algebra 2 students who hadn't taken the course.  It did not.

This tells me that the course, as currently designed, isn't doing nearly as well as we'd like it to.  This could be a call to revamp the course, not just eliminate it, as our administration has done.

Ideally we'd evaluate the effectiveness of the course by comparing the Algebra 2 grades of students who took the intermediate course with the Algebra 2 grade they would have gotten had they not taken it; of course, that is impossible to do.  We're going to try one more analysis, though, and compare the Algebra 2 grades of students who needed the intermediate course and didn't take it to those who did.  We're going to search through our records and see if we can come up with that data.

As it stands right now, the course we have isn't what I'd call very effective.  Here's how we can spin that:  we created the course in response to what we saw as a student need, we tried the course for a few years, and now data tells us the course isn't effective and it's gone.  The WASC people should love that kind of data analysis and introspection!

Ideological Diversity at the Ivies

With all the rich kids there you'd assume someone would be conservative, wouldn't you?  After all, I'm told that (despite all evidence to the contrary) the Republicans are the party of the rich!

The list of keynote commencement speakers at Ivy League institutions for 2013 does not include a single conservative, a recent study authored by the conservative Young America’s Foundation (YAF) found.

Instead seven of the elite schools opted to invite ideological liberal speakers such as media billionaire Oprah Winfrey, Vice President Joe Biden (D), Newark Mayor Cory Booker (D), Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I), among others.

Only Brown University, which chooses a commencement keynote from among its students, did not have a 2013 speaker who is generally associated with the left.

YAF spokesman Adam Tragone told Campus Reform on Tuesday the list appears to reveal a larger trend of liberal bias occurring on these campuses.

I'm sure the response to an inquiry would be something along the lines of not tolerating intolerance, or something equally goofy.

What Would Drive Someone To Do Something Like This?

I'm serious.  What would cause someone to do something so nasty?

A sergeant first class on the staff of the United States Military Academy at West Point has been accused of videotaping female cadets without their consent, sometimes when they were undressed in the bathroom or the shower, according to Army officials...

“The Army is committed to ensuring the safety and welfare of our cadets at the Military Academy at West Point — as well as all soldiers throughout our Army,” Gen. John F. Campbell, the Army vice chief of staff, said on Wednesday. “Once notified of the violation, a full investigation was launched, followed by swift action to correct the problem. Our cadets must be confident that issues such as these are handled quickly and decisively, and that our system will hold those responsible accountable.”  

If guilty, this NCO deserves (and will probably be sentenced to) the US Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth.

Oklahoma

I support an individual's, or an organization's, giving as much (or as little) of its own money to relief efforts in Oklahoma.  Good people believe in and practice charity, and history shows that Americans are a very generous people.

It's impossible to be "generous" with other people's money, though.  I don't support the massive amounts of federal money that make up so much aid after such disasters, and if you would like to know why, read this post.  In it I relate a story about Davy Crockett (who as a Congressman voted for $20,000 for relief for Georgetown after a fire) and one about Grover Cleveland (who vetoed a bill providing drought and famine relief to Texas--because there was no authority to do so in the Constitution!).

You can donate to the American Red Cross here.

When You've Lost Eugene Robinson...

I've mentioned Eugene Robinson before, not very flatteringly in this post.  Let the Obama administration go after his kind of people (journalists) and not my kind of people (Tea Partiers) and Robinson finally sees the light:

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold.

It also may well be unconstitutional...

The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior...

After discussing the AP story:

The Fox News case is even worse.

Wow, even Fox gets respect from some liberals now.  Too bad it took a direct threat of the loss of 1st Amendment freedoms to make that happen.

If this had been the view of prior administrations, surely Bob Woodward would be a lifer in some federal prison. The cell next door might be occupied by my Post colleague Dana Priest, who disclosed the CIA’s network of secret prisons. Or by the New York Times’ James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, who revealed the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

Robinson sees the threat now. Welcome to the party.

I've heard it said that these current scandals have taken distrust of the government from the "tinfoil hat crowd" to "mainstream America".  I disagree.  I think they've confirmed what the Founders knew about excessive power, what conservatives have always believed about government power, and shown liberals to be flat out wrong.  That they believed these threats to be "tinfoil hat" just shows their own biases and blinders.

Why I Don't Support So-called "Hate Crimes" Legislation

From the major Sacramento newspaper:

The defense attorney for accused hate attacker Clayton Garzon asserted Monday that the March beating of another Davis man was not fueled by anti-gay sentiment.

Garzon, 20, faces three felony assault charges and hate crime allegations connected to the beating of Lawrence "Mikey" Partida early March 10 near Third and I streets in Davis. The attack occurred outside a birthday party for Partida that was across the street from where Garzon lives...

The attorney called Brigham Young University linguistics professor William Eggington, who testified that slurs targeted at Partida were "more consistent with challenging someone's masculinity," than with hate speech.

The professor also said that a tolerant upbringing at home in a liberal community "would lower the possibility that this would be a gender- related crime."

So if you grow up in Davis, you're less likely to be a bigot than if you grow up on Salt Lake City or Omaha.  Did you catch that?  But let's continue:

"I walked out and saw Mikey covered in blood," Cooper said. "Clayton was walking away. He said, 'Your (gay slur) cousin, was talking (expletive). I had to (expletive) him up.' "

Why isn't it bad enough that he beat the man to death?  Is it better, or worse, to have beaten the man to death because he's gay rather than because Garzon wanted to rob him or because the victim shot his mouth off at Garzon?

This stuff is too Orwellian for me.  Hate crime = thought crime.
(I've addressed this before--scroll to the bottom of the page and type 'hate crime', without the quote marks, into the search box.)

We Only Care If It's Women

Maybe it’s perfectly natural to expect the gender differences by academic discipline that are represented in the chart above, and maybe we should give up trying to socially engineer perfect gender parity for each academic field. And when there is so much concern about female under-representation in some of the STEM fields like engineering and computer science, where is the concern about male under-representation in the STEM field of biology, where is the concern about the significant male under-representation in female-dominated fields like health professions, public administration, education and psychology, and where is the concern about the gender imbalance favoring women for college degrees in general at all levels – associate’s degrees, bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and doctoral degrees?

Also included in the article is a chart of major by sex.

Update:  Here's an entirely different angle on the "we only care if it's women" issue:

I often think about how men are silenced these days on anything having to do with gender issues. I received an email from a male reader who is concerned about the same thing: he is told he is a “rape apologist” for even suggesting that men might be unfairly accused of rape. Here is his letter....

Graduation

I attended today, at least for awhile.  I'll update this tomorrow with impressions.

Update, 5/21/13:  I wasn't impressed with much at the ceremony.  I don't want any individual to take offense so I won't specify what I didn't like or why, choosing instead to say nothing when I don't have anything nice to say.

One thing I thought was very nice, though, was what was done with our two foreign exchange students.  Since they don't really graduate, our previous principal wouldn't let them participate in the ceremony at all.  Our current principal, though, brought with him from his previous job the nice gesture of allowing them to participate by calling them up onto the stage and presenting them each with an American flag.  Very classy.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Let me start with the positive:

The run time of 2 hrs and 3 minutes goes by with a quickness.  It was certainly action-packed.  As an action movie, I genuinely enjoyed it.  Usually I leave Star Trek movies slightly disappointed; I haven't enjoyed a Star Trek-themed movie this much, the first time I saw it, since the 80s, with Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home.  Also, the campiness and silliness present in the last movie (and the original series) was thankfully missing from this outing.

But this wasn't a Star Trek movie.  It was a great action/adventure/sci-fi movie, but it wasn't Star Trek.

I've figured out what the problem is.  This wasn't Star Trek, it was an action movie with Star Trek characters in it.  (I'm not the only one to comment on this.)

Part of the problem is that I have no affection for the people on the screen.  Part of the allure of Star Trek is the relationship, if you will, the viewer has with the characters.  The first 6 movies relied on characters we'd seen for 3 years on tv and dozens of years in syndication.  We knew and loved them.  The same goes for The Next Generation characters; we knew them so well after 7 seasons on tv, we cared about them in their movies.  We could see them as our friends.

In the new movies you can say that's Captain Kirk up there, but it's not.  I know who Captain Kirk is, and it's Shatner.  You can't just say this person on the screen is Captain Kirk.  He's not.  Same goes for the other characters.  And for better or worse, the two newest movies are really Kirk movies, with the rest of the characters thrown in because they're supposed to be there.  The attempt at recreating the bond between Kirk and Spock is failing, and totally lacking is any development of the third leg of that triad, McCoy. Let's not forget that it was the three of them that made for such compelling stories--the brash Kirk, the stoic Spock, the emotional McCoy.  All we have in the current movies is their names, their characters are missing.  The others--Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov--they exist now only to move the story along, not because they're important to us.

You know what else is missing?  The biggest and most understated character of all, Enterprise herself.  Who among us didn't cry when Enterprise was destroyed in Search For Spock?  Who didn't cheer when we saw Enterprise-A?  We'd already seen an Enterprise destroyed by the time Generations came around so the loss of Enterprise-D in that movie wasn't as big a shock, but it was still a loss.  And didn't you ache when Enterprise-E rammed Scimitar, probably saving humanity by doing so?  Enterprise is a beautiful thing, her captains speak of her with reverence--or at least they used to.  In the new movies you don't get that sense.  She's a set, not a ship with a crew that's like family.  She's a method of transportation.  Into Darkness didn't have a single shot of Enterprise porn, those sweeping exterior views of the ship that make you long to be aboard.

In Star Trek you must have shots of Enterprise.  In battles you must see her flying by, firing phasers, maneuvering--you cheer for her not just because of her crew, but because you want that particular ship to win the fight.  In Into Darkness you see brief shots of Enterprise being hit and damaged, severely, what's missing is any attempt to make you feel affection for the ship itself.  As for "grand shots", we're treated with one of her rising out of an ocean (really?  freakin' seriously???) and one of her rising out of clouds (as if she's an atmospheric vessel--what's next, landing gear?).

Can you identify any specific place in the new Enterprise besides her bridge?  We don't know this new ship.  On the original Enterprise and Enterprise-D we knew what crew quarters looked like, we knew Main Engineering, we knew the transporter room, we knew the shuttle bay, we knew sick bay.  On Enterprise-D we also knew 10 Forward, the captain's ready room, and even the battle bridge (used what, only twice?).

We don't know this new Enterprise.  Enterprise herself isn't taken seriously in the reboot movies.  She exists only to take Pine/Kirk where he needs to go.

All those criticisms above relate to the Star Trek ethos; notice I haven't even addressed the storyline and plot problems in the current movie--and they are legion, if you're a Star Trek fan.

If you're not a fan, Into Darkness is a thrilling movie that keeps your attention almost non-stop from beginning to end.  It's a good movie, but definitely not a fanboy movie.  It's too bad these reboots have to be one or the other, and not both.

When You've Lost Jon Stewart...

Taking Statements Out of Context

Do you remember the brouhaha during the last election cycle, when people knowingly took out of context a Romney statement about the poor?  This is what people fixated on:

I’m not concerned about the very poor.

The entirety was much different:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”

“I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

How easy would it be to take this statement, regarding the IRS scandal, out of context?

I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant.

Here's more context:

“I can’t speak to the law here. The law is irrelevant. The activity was outrageous and inexcusable, and it was stopped and it needs to be fixed so we ensure it never happens again,” Pfeiffer said.

Stephanopoulos asked Pfeiffer if he really thought the law is “irrelevant.”

“What I mean is, whether it’s legal or illegal is not important to the fact that the conduct doesn’t matter. The Department of Justice has said they’re looking into the legality of this. The president is not going to wait for that. We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again, regardless of how that turns out,” Pfeiffer said.

I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine why the press fixated on the former but not the latter.