Tonight's Vice Presidential Debate

Joe Biden didn't do near as poorly as Barack Obama did, but he didn't do nearly as well as Paul Ryan did.

Update, 10/12/12:  Peggy Noonan was succinct as well as fair, saying,  “National Democrats keep confusing strength with aggression and command with sarcasm. Even the latter didn’t work for Mr. Biden. The things he said had the rhythm and smirk of sarcasm without the cutting substance.”

Milton Friedman on Libertarianism

The more I learn about him, the more I wish I'd paid attention to this kind of material when he was alive.  I'd love to have heard him speak in person.

Anyway, his explanation (early in the interview) about Central Park and how it would be better kept if it were in private hands is pure genius. 

State Universities Playing Politics

I have to believe this is illegal--and if it isn't illegal it should be, and either way it's unethical:

Hundreds of thousands of applicants to California State University campuses this year will be receiving a warning instead of the typical warm note thanking them for their interest.

The spots they are hoping to fill next year, the prospective students will be cautioned, could evaporate if the governor's push to raise taxes in November fails. The letter also will say no admissions decisions will be made until a few weeks after the election, a departure from the usual policy of notifying applicants beginning in October.

The likely take-away: Vote Yes on Proposition 30 to help boost your prospects.

Why Do Some Adults Want to Sexualize Children?

Is there to be no boundary between what is for adults and what is for children?

Hundreds of Houston-area parents are outraged over a new sex education program that teaches 12-year-old children about oral, anal and vaginal sex – and uses graphic curriculum to instruct students on how to use condoms.

I don't get why some people think it's so important to teach children about graphic sex.  12 year old children.

Tragedy of the Commons

I'm sure that readers of this blog are familiar with the concept of the tragedy of the commons--which, like most of reality, is a good primer on why socialism does not and cannot work.  With that background, go enjoy Professor Reynolds' anecdote regarding shiny bikes and "free bikes" at the beach...

If Mints Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Mints

Why do some people insist on doubling down on stupid?

A group of high school students in Pekin, Ill., were suspended last week after school officials suspected the mints they were eating were actually illegal drugs.

Jason McMichael, the father of one of the students, told the Journal Star that his 17-year-old son Eric was suspended for two days from Pekin Community High School and not allowed to attend the school's homecoming festivities after staffers found four students eating energy mint tablets that are marketed like caffeine energy drinks...

McMichael's father said school officials later admitted they did not know if the chewable, unmarked mints were, in fact, illegal drugs but upheld the suspensions anyway, saying the teens displayed "gross misconduct for taking an unknown product."

"Now they know nothing illegal happened," McMichael said on Friday, "but they're still pursuing the suspension."

Superintendent Paula Davis told the paper that while she was not able to discuss the incident, school officials would have been within their rights to discipline the students if they were seen "ingesting things that look like unmarked pills."

Superintendent Davis needs to find alternate employment.  As my favorite Warner Brothers cartoon character used to say, "What a maroon!"

Your Online Presence Is Forever

There have been 8-zillion stories and warnings about this in the past but still the point doesn't seem to get across:

Results from Kaplan Test Prep’s 2012 survey of college admissions officers* show that schools are increasingly discovering information on Facebook and Google that negatively impact applicants’ acceptance chances. While the percentage of admissions officers who took to Google (27%) and checked Facebook (26%) as part of the applicant review process increased slightly (20% for Google and 26% for Facebook in 2011) from last year, the percentage that said they discovered something that negatively impacted an applicant’s chances of getting into the school nearly tripled – from 12% last year to 35% this year. Offenses cited included essay plagiarism, vulgarities in blogs, alcohol consumption in photos, things that made them “wonder,” and “illegal activities.” In 2008, when Kaplan began tracking this trend, only one in 10 admissions officers reported checking applicants’ social networking pages.

Do You Ever Really Stop Being A Teacher?

Not too many minutes ago I heard that fateful ding from my computer--someone has sent me a message on the Facebook.  I went in to check, and turns out it's a former student who had a question about statistics.  A brief explanation about a "sampling distribution" was all that was needed to jog his memory about what I taught him almost two years ago--and now he can cruise through stats in college.

I like knowing that he knows he can still count on my help.

Equality of Outcomes

I'm one who believes in equality of opportunity while others believe in equality of outcomes.  Usually, equality of outcomes means bringing everyone down to the lowest common level:

A talented head cook at a school in central Sweden has been told to stop baking fresh bread and to cut back on her wide-ranging veggie buffets because it was unfair that students at other schools didn't have access to the unusually tasty offerings...

"A menu has been developed... It is about making a collective effort on quality, to improve school meals overall and to try and ensure everyone does the same," Katarina Lindberg, head of the unit responsible for the school diet scheme, told the local Falukuriren newspaper.

You remember the old joke about a Puritan's being someone who's afraid that someone, somewhere, might be having fun? Well, you know what we call a person who's afraid that someone, somewhere, might have it better than someone else....

Californians Shooting Themselves In The Foot

You can have wackos running your government or you can have a reasonable cost of living.  You can't have both:

Liberal Californians, you've done this.

I Wonder How Many Teachers Get Away With Relationships With Students

Seriously, I do wonder that, because kids are notoriously blabby, and it only takes one person to report the misconduct and bring hellfire down upon the shoulders of the miscreant.  Even if the teacher and student are incredibly discreet, the Sword of Damocles that hangs over the relationship, that fear of getting caught, just can't be worth it, can it?  I would think the chances of getting caught are way too high, knowing what I do about teenagers.

It must have been worth it for these guys, though, if anything in this report is true:

RUNNEMEDE, N.J. -- A sex scandal erupted Thursday at a high school here, and a top law enforcement official said a culture of permissiveness allowed male teachers to pursue sexual relationships with female students.

Three faculty members at Triton Regional High School -- math teachers Jeff Logandro, 32, and Daniel Michielli, 27, both of Blackwood, N.J.; and health instructor Nick Martinelli, 28, of Cherry Hill, N.J. -- allegedly engaged in sexual activity and other misconduct with separate members of last year's senior class.

And when the school's top administrators were told of the alleged activities, Principal Catherine DePaul and Vice Principal Jernee Kollock worked to protect the teachers rather than turn them in, authorities allege...

"It is alleged that throughout the past school year, the defendants took a trip to the beach with the victims and exchanged sexually explicit text messages"...

According to the prosecutor, DePaul learned of the allegations in April from a substitute teacher who had been told by a pupil that teachers were engaging in sexual contact with students.

DePaul did not alert authorities as the law required but instead "conducted a halfhearted and inadequate inquiry aimed primarily at protecting the teachers and covering up their relationships with the students," (Prosecutor) Faulk said.

Definitely makes you wonder.

Discipline By Race

In a school district that's 6% white, the feds are going to "monitor" 38 schools which suspend "too many" black boys.

Who, again, was that smart man who said something about the "soft bigotry of low expectations"?

"This Is A Democratic School"

Wow.  Just wow.

A Philadelphia high school teacher is under investigation after she reportedly ordered a student to take off a t-shirt supporting Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign and compared the shirt to a Ku Klux Klan sheet.

The incident occurred at Charles Carroll High School in Port Richmond. When the student refused the order, she tried to throw the girl out of class.

The teacher reportedly told the 16-year-old student that the high school was a “Democratic school” and then threatened to use a marker to cross out Romney’s name...


(District spokesman) Gallard said the student was well within her rights to wear the t-shirt and was not in violation of any school dress codes.

In the meantime, the teacher was switched out of the class “to allow the student to feel comfortable to come to the class.”

Gallard said the student was within her rights.

“She was expressing her freedom of speech, and was not in violation of any school or district policy,” he told the newspaper.

What A Great Debate

There's no way around it, Obama had his clock cleaned.  Romney mopped the floor with him, then hit the ball out of the park.

If you have any other metaphors, let's hear them.

Hugh Hewitt is comparing this performance to Agincourt.  Wow.

Garbage Cam

I heard this on the radio this morning, and it's true--the utopians have no problem shoving their views down your throat.  Literally.

Take school cafeteria food, for example.  The utopians thought, "Kids should eat better."  So the first thing they did was change the law so that schools could only sell certain items, and had to make certain others available.  "Kids aren't eating enough fruits and vegetables", they say, so they require schools to provide more fruits and vegetables in school lunches.  "The kids aren't eating the fruits and vegetables we make available", they say, so then they require the food to be served to children.

What happens when the children don't want to eat the food that's served to them?

A Florida school district is considering a plan to install surveillance cameras on cafeteria trash cans to monitor what kids are throwing away – after they discovered that students were tossing out their federally-mandated fruit and vegetables.

The Lake County School Board said more than $75,000 worth of vegetables have been thrown in the garbage. The veggies and fresh fruit are party of the Obama administration’s policy to force schools to provide healthy produce in lunch rooms.

Is this really how we want our schools to be?

See, with conservatism, the worst thing that happens is that government leaves you alone as long as you aren't messing with anyone else.  The liberal alternative to that is that you are a toy of the government and must do whatever you're told.

Which style of government do you think is more fitting to humans?

Not Even Trying To Hide It

Ann Althouse's post on Instapundit:

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN REQUIRES STUDENTS TO GIVE THEIR PHONE NUMBERS TO THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN in order to get access to the central campus zone where Obama will be giving a speech this Thursday. Here‘s the University’s website — attempting to frame the event as a historical presidential visit — which links to a page on the Obama campaign website. You need tickets to go to the event, and the ticket-application form demands information of obvious use to the campaign. So not only is the University contributing a fabulous photo op to the campaign, it is connecting students to the campaign website and almost tricking them into giving the campaign their personal contact information.

UPDATE: The University now openly calls the event a “campaign rally”!

GLOBAL WARMING!!!

On Mars?

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is enjoying some nice, warm weather on the Red Planet — and spring hasn't even come to its landing site yet.

Curiosity's onboard weather station, which is called the Remote Environment Monitoring Station (REMS), has measured air temperatures as high as 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) in the afternoon. And temperatures have climbed above freezing during more than half of the Martian days, or sols, since REMS was turned on, scientists said.

These measurements are a bit unexpected, since it's still late winter at Gale Crater, the spot 4.5 degrees south of the Martian equator where Curiosity touched down on Aug. 5.

"That we are seeing temperatures this warm already during the day is a surprise and very interesting," Felipe Gómez, of the Centro de Astrobiología in Madrid, said in a statement.

Are its ice caps still receding?  Do the Martians have too many SUV's?

The Longest Three Minutes

For the past several years at my school, we've had two hours of classes in the morning followed by a 13-minute break, followed by two more hours of classes, and then lunch.

Four years ago I wrote about Tea Club, which started with just a few of us and grew into a grand event each Wednesday.  We eventually had an entire shelf with different  flavors of tea on it, and we would rush to the lounge at break time on Wednesday to dig into whatever snackie the designated person brought.  It was a major social event, and I was proud to have started it and kept it running.

This year, for a few reasons, we've had to cut that break down to only 10 minutes.  This had a huge effect on tea club.  It may not seem like much--after all, it's only 3 minutes--but that decrease from 13 to 10 minutes made it all but impossible to have a cup of tea, a snack, and some conversation.  We had just enough time to get to the lounge, get our tea and treat, and head back to our rooms.

My first attempt at a remedy was to suggest moving tea club to lunchtime.  The problem there, though, is that lots of people use the lounge at lunch, it's a different "atmosphere" at lunch.  Additionally, plenty of people are in the lounge at lunch who wouldn't participate, and it seemed, uh, odd to have our group in there doing our thing when we usually do something entirely different with different people at lunch--and those same people were just a few feet away from us at the other end of the table.

So I suggested ditching tea club and having Dessert Club--someone would volunteer to bring a snackie for all of us for lunchtime on Friday.  It would be a nice way to end the week.

Only a couple of us brought things.  Last week there was nothing.  No one wanted to sign up (or "commit").  Today I took down the almost-empty sign-up sheet.

It wasn't really about the treats.  It never was.  The treats were just the magnet for the socializing and the camaraderie.

I'm sorry it's gone.  I hope something else "special" takes its place.

Professor Loses It

Sometimes it happens:

An "eccentric" Michigan State University math professor had what appears to be a nervous breakdown during class this afternoon, removing all his clothes and screaming obscenities at students.

There are several comments at the end of the article and these two are my favorites:

Am I the only one who thinks its distasteful to post a naked picture of a man who is obviously having a mental health issue?

and

Ugh...freshman engineering students. I'm sure he was already nuts, but dealing with those asshats everyday would push anyone over the edge.

Anti-Semitism

I marvel to think that I as a California taxpayer help fund the education of these clueless, entitled little twits:

The University of California Student Association (UCSA) secretly passed a resolution last month which condemned the nation of Israel of “racism.”

The resolution, passed through the student organization with unanimous support, claims there is a “wealth of scholarship and legal opinion” that exists affirming “racism” on behalf of Israel.

The University of California Student Association, the “official voice of UC students” passed a resolution accusing the nation of Israel of “racism.”

The resolution was in response to HR 35, a California Assembly resolution condemning anti-Semitism in higher education.

I am not getting my money's worth.