Jobs Reports

I just made my first "political" video on the Obama Administration's jobs reports--take a look on YouTube.

The Seriousness of College Entrance Exams

Like the Koreans and the Japanese, the Uzbekis take their college entrance exams seriously:

Uzbek authorities August 1 blocked text messaging and mobile internet use nationwide during nationwide university entrance exams from 8.30am to 1.30 pm, Uzmetronom reported...

Fergana News reported that the blockage is a routine Uzbek anti-cheating measure.

Hat tip to Joanne Jacobs for the story.

Public Education Headquarters

Washington DC, June 2010

Rome, July 2012

Costly Union Junkets--to Las Vegas, Of Course

One of the largest unions in the state has once again taken its annual conference Las Vegas.

The California School Employees Association's annual conference is taking place this week at the Paris Hotel, taking 1,900 attendees, and their money, out of California.  link and link

In my district, this union represents secretarial, custodial, and similar employees.

Might one argue that by taking all this money out of California, these union members are depriving the state of the very revenue it needs in order to better fund education and keep us from having furlough days?  I'm just saying....

Funky University Classes

Every time I read an article like this, my gut impression is, "Colleges aren't teaching anymore, they're doing crap like this!"  Of course, that's exactly the kind of kneejerk reaction the newspeople want to get out of readers with such a story!

So I think about it a little more, and then I come around to, "Are these classes absolutely worthless?  Is there nothing to be learned by studying these particular perspectives?"  After all, I doubt there's anyone taking all the classes on the list, what's wrong with one bohemian little class?

But then I read about this class and I think, "absolutely worthless":

WST 394, Desperate Housewives: Gender, Family & Pop Culture
A women's studies class that examines the fictional lives of the wealthy homemakers of Wisteria Lane ... anybody else thinking "easy A?"

My School District

According to EIA, since 2005 my school district's enrollment has gone down over 5%, the number of teachers has gone down over 6%, and while our per-pupil spending has gone up over 16%, we're still way below the state and national averages.

Starting Early on That Whole "Stealing The Election" Thing

Obama campaign sues to restrict military voting


Defense contractors told by Obama administration to skip pre-election pink slips

Chipping away at democracy, one election at a time....

Update, 8/5/12:  A little pushback:

Fifteen Ohio military groups have gone to court to oppose an “offensive” lawsuit filed by President Obama’s campaign that challenges a law allowing military members to vote on days when the rest of the state cannot.

“The Obama campaign’s and Democratic National Committee’s argument that it is arbitrary and unconstitutional to afford special consideration, flexibility, and accommodations to military voters to make it easier for them to vote in person is not only offensive, but flatly wrong as a matter of law,” the military groups — which include the Marine Corps League, the Association of the U.S. Army, and the Association of the U.S. Navy — argued in their filing.

Who Gave This Quintessentially American September 11th Quote?

"But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until it has struck before you crush him."

Do The Headline and the Story Match?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what's meant by the phrase "media bias":

New Law in North Carolina Bans Latest Scientific Predictions of Sea-Level Rise
ABC News By ALON HARISH | ABC News – 7 hrs ago

A new law in North Carolina will ban the state from basing coastal policies on the latest scientific predictions of how much the sea level will rise, prompting environmentalists to accuse the state of disrespecting climate science.

The law has put the state in the spotlight for what critics have called nearsightedness and climate change denial, but its proponents said the state needed to put a moratorium on predictions of sea level rise until scientific techniques improve.

Just in case you're not sure, the answer is no, the headline and the story don't match.

Discrimination in Higher Education

It’s not every day that left-leaning academics admit that they would discriminate against a minority.

But that was what they did in a peer-reviewed study of political diversity in the field of social psychology, which will be published in the September edition of the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science.

Psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers, based at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, surveyed a roughly representative sample of academics and scholars in social psychology and found that “In decisions ranging from paper reviews to hiring, many social and personality psychologists admit that they would discriminate against openly conservative colleagues.”

This finding surprised the researchers. The survey questions “were so blatant that I thought we’d get a much lower rate of agreement,” Mr. Inbar said. “Usually you have to be pretty tricky to get people to say they’d discriminate against minorities.” link

When people tell you how horrible they are, it's best to believe them.

I found this attempt at exculpatory explanation to be wildly entertaining:

Mr. Inbar, who volunteered for the Obama campaign in 2008, cautions that the finding reflects only what respondents said they would do — not necessarily what they actually would do in real life.

I'm sure Mr. Inbar would give conservatives the benefit of a doubt, too. Yes, quite sure.

Went to Chick-fil-A Today

It was 1pm on the day after the buycott, and still the parking lot and the restaurant were jam-packed.  It looked like they had every employee they could find working back there, yet all the counter people were as nice, polite, and pleasant as possible even though they were clearly harried by the sheer volume of orders.  I posted the following on Facebook:

Heads are gonna explode over Chick-fil-A. What to do in Sacramento???

"Sacramento Chick-fil-A owner Joshua Paul said his location did a day's worth of business by the lunch hour.

He said his store is open to all customers.

'We are in the community and we will treat every guest with honor, dignity and respect,' Paul said.

Paul is a member of the Sacramento Rainbow Chamber of Commerce." (Boldface is mine, and the quote comes from this story.)

So if you go to C-f-A, our friends on the left will say you're supporting hate. But if you *don't* go, it's just as clear to me that you're supporting homophobic hate.

What's a good leftie to do?

I know what a good rightie is going to do. I'm going to enjoy the lunch I just had, and then sit back with a bowl of popcorn and watch the antics!

I'm kind of a moderate on the gay marriage issue.  When the public votes to allow gay marriage, I'll no longer be against it, but I can't stomach a legislature's or a judge's redefining a word.  Orwell's 1984 showed me where that leads.  But anyway, I didn't go to C-f-A to support traditional marriage or to be anti-gay-marriage; no, I went to stand up to the bullies in San Francisco, Boston, and Chicago, who want to use the power of government to punish a corporation because its president doesn't have the "correct" political or social views.

Just for fun's sake, let's check out which restaurants the Sacramento Rainbow Chamber of Commerce recommended for it's Dining Out With PRIDE 2011.

Those of you who want to make everything political, even down to which businesses you frequent, perhaps you'll learn that the world isn't quite as black and white as you think it is.  Perhaps you could watch this video and tell me if you support this guy or are proud of what he did in your name.

Too Much Government

I'm sure there are some who, because I'm against this, will reflexively support government here, but I just have to believe they're not thinking this through.  How can anyone say government is acting reasonably and rationally here?

An Oregon man is expected to spend a month in jail after being convicted on nine misdemeanor charges related to his illegal use of…water. Gary Harrington was sentenced after being found guilty of illegally collecting water on his own rural property.

Harrington, of Eagle Point, Oregon, has been fighting for his right to do what he wishes with water since 2002. Now more than a decade after he first defended himself over allegations that the man-made ponds on his 170 acres of land violated local law, Harrington has been sentenced to 30 days behind bars and fined over $1,500.

Authorities say that Harrington broke the law by collecting natural rain water and snow runoff that landed on his property. Officials with the Medford Water Commission contested that the water on Harrington’s property, whether or not it came from the sky, was considered a tributary of nearby Crowfoot Creek and thus subject to a 1925 law that gives the MWC full ownership and rights. Therefore prosecutors were able to argue in court — successfully — that three homemade fishing and boating ponds in Harrington’s backyard violated the law.

For filling “three illegal reservoirs” on his property with runoff water, Harrington has been convicted on nine misdemeanor charges in Circuit Court. He says he will attempt to appeal, but as long as the conviction stands to serve 30 days of imprisonment. He has also been sentenced to an additional three years of probation.

Random Trip Pictures

They must love their math in Dubrovnik, judging from the names of these two bookstores.

Freedom of Religion in Canada

There's even less of a "First Amendment ethos" in Canada than what remains in the United States:

A couple minutes into the video, the commentator discusses religion in the schools.

Do We Really Need A Federal Department of Education?

I'm not convinced that the Office of Education we had pre-Carter couldn't do everything we need done at the federal level, but without a Cabinet-level department, what would we need such junkets for?

Federal education officials spend more than $1.5 million every year on a gathering of college financial aid administrators held at high-end vacation destinations.

Last year's four-day conference, which opened in late November, was hosted by the U.S. Department of Education at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The year before that, the event was at the Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin Resort in Orlando.

The MGM event was the federal government's most expensive conference held at a casino hotel last year, according to the Federal Procurement Data System.

Shoring Up The Base

I'm beginning to believe the reports of terror within the Democratic Party, especially after reading this:

The Democratic Party has added new language endorsing gay marriage in its platform draft, the Washington Blade reports. Sen. Harry Reid said in May that he believed the party would alter its platform in favor of gay marriage, after President Obama spoke out that month in favor of same-sex couples' right to marry.

I don't see that this gets them any more votes than they already had and it could lose them some votes, especially among older "John Kennedy" Democrats.  So why put this in their platform now?  Maybe because they know their prospects truly are so bad that they need to shore up their base.

California Teachers Sure Don't Like NCLB

I laugh, or perhaps sneer at the intellect of the whiner, every time I hear about how the No Child Left Behind Act has ruined education here in California.  The point I usually bring up is, our state testing regime pre-dates, and is more stringent than, NCLB!

Now there's another point to mention.  If that Republican law (written by right-winger Ted Kennedy) is so bad, why has California not asked for any waivers?  I mean, the governor is a Democrat and both houses of the legislature are run by Democrats, which means they're run by the CTA.  Why has California not asked for any waivers from the law's supposedly onerous requirements?  (note that the link is from an organization that describes itself as "progressive")

Is Algebra Necessary?

Every few years, some writer somewhere thinks he (or she) is going to set the world on fire by suggesting that we should stop trying to teach all our students algebra:

A TYPICAL American school day finds some six million high school students and two million college freshmen struggling with algebra. In both high school and college, all too many students are expected to fail. Why do we subject American students to this ordeal? I’ve found myself moving toward the strong view that we shouldn’t. 

I've decided not to get upset by such articles anymore.  I addressed the topic over 6 years ago, and I don't see that my points are any less valid in the face of the above-linked article than they were in 2006, when I said:

A well-rounded, liberally-educated person needs to be able to do more than just write, more than just calculate, more than just know geography. A well-rounded person needs to know all of the above. And can we not accomplish that minimum after 13 years of school...?

Mr. Cohen, in his disgust for an entire academic field, wants to close doors for students before those students even get to those doors. How many times must we hear--by the same people who don't think students should be taught algebra--about how all our low-skill jobs are being sent overseas? Or how many times do those who denigrate algebra refer to it as "college track" or "higher" math, notwithstanding the fact that it's taught to 13-year-olds all over the world? 

Our problem is not that we're trying to teach too much math to our students.

Why I Support The Electoral College

In sum, the nation conducts democratic, popular elections -- but they are conducted at the state level, rather than the national level. Professor Charles R. Kesler of Claremont McKenna College explains: "In truth, the issue is democracy with federalism (the Electoral College) versus democracy without federalism (a national popular vote). Either is democratic. Only the Electoral College preserves federalism, moderates ideological differences, and promotes national consensus in our choice of a chief executive."  link

There are many other well-thought-out points in the linked commentary.

No, This Is Not Las Vegas

This is the real thing, not the Venetian :-)

But as in Las Vegas, in the real Venice only tourists ride in the gondolas.