Long Couple of Days

It started yesterday.  We had our usual Thursday after-school collaboration as well as a staff meeting.  After that I met with a student for over an hour to prep for his congressman's interview panel tomorrow for service academy nominations.

Today we met at lunch again to see how much he'd polished up his presentation since the previous afternoon.  And after school today I met with one of my own students who will go before the same panel tomorrow, and she and I worked on her interviewing skills.  Then I met with a former student who studies math at a nearby college, he wanted to go over something he couldn't exactly remember from the pre-calculus course I taught him however many years ago.

And then I had a class' worth of tests to grade, important not just for promptness' sake but also because progress reports are due to be completed by Tuesday.  All the tests are done and entered into the computer, I just have to put in a few assignments and then do the progress reports--an easy job for Monday.

Tomorrow I have 4 1/2 hours of training at a nearby high school.  To be honest I'm not really interested in the training, but if the school district has the money they're going to spend it somehow and it may as well go to me.  It'll be wonderful if I get something useful out of it.

And I feel like I'm behind where I should be with my master's course, which means I'll probably be spending some time tomorrow studying.

It's a long couple of days.

Why Is This "Disruptive"?

Things are "disruptive" if we let them be, if we give succor to other people's insecurities and stupidities.  If I've said it once I've said it a zillion times:  if it's not illegal, what school officials do on their own time is no one's business but their own.  Yes, I can understand certain specific activities might be genuinely "disruptive"--how do you handle a class of kids who have seen your nude spread on the internet--but in general what we have is a bunch of people trying to impose some wacky sort of Victorian morality on teachers:

A Connecticut middle school principal has resigned amid questions about his role in making violent movies featuring scantily clad women.

Officials announced Mark Foley's resignation as Granby Memorial Middle School principal Wednesday.

Superintendent Alan Addley says Foley did nothing illegal. But he says Foley acknowledged that his movies became a "distraction" and he didn't want continuing media coverage to distract students, parents or staff from academic work.

He makes erotic slasher films.  And that's enough to have him removed from being principal?  Geez, I hope he didn't also own stock in a firearms company or Philip Morris, those would be even more unforgiveable!  Ohmigawd, what if someone saw him at a restaurant drinking a beer?!

And before anyone jumps in with how unions are necessary to protect people from such silliness, I point out that this occurred in Connecticut, a very "blue" state.  I also remind you of the butt-print artist, a story from Virginia.

Update:  more on the topic here.

I Hope This Kind Of Idiocy Stays Confined To Europe

The next time you’re in the City of Lights and are about to snap nighttime pictures of the Eiffel Tower don’t: you could be fined.

An obscure clause in EU law states that the tower's evening light display is an “art work” -- and therefore is copyrighted. link

If it's out in public, it's fair game for photography. Yes, I can understand a few narrowly-tailored exceptions, but landmarks are not within those exceptions.

Agency Fee Rebate

Take a look at that for a moment.  An arbiter paid by the union decided that over 66% of the NEA's activities were not "chargeable", that they were not related to organizing or representation.  What were they related to?  Probably trying (and, for the most part, failing) to influence elections.

So almost 2/3 of the NEA's expenditures, and over 1/3 of the state and local expenditures, are for activities not directly related to improving my pay, benefits, and working conditions.  Why are we required to pay these people at all?

If Wisconsin, of all places, can do it, California can.  It'll happen some day.

Obamacare Solves All Those Problems We Had Pre-Obamacare, Right?

Wrong:

A fully-insured Wisconsin woman may soon have to file for bankruptcy after she suffered cardiac arrest and was taken, while unconscious, to an emergency room that wasn't in her healthcare network...

But this is not to say that Blue Cross-Blue Shield paid nothing toward Rothbauer's care.

The company says it paid its maximum for in-network care--$156,000 of the original $254,000 charged by St. Mary's.

It's called balance billing and its 100 percent legal, even specifically allowed under the Obamacare. 

That left $98,000, which Rothbauer successfully negotiated down to $9,800. However, as WISCTV points out, that doesn't cover bills from specific doctors, for the ambulance, the therapist, etc.

Now the fully-insured professional is stuck with a $50,000 bill because of some bad timing and a few blocks.

The Shortest Time In Coventry

I'm off the hook.

Today the fire alarm went off again.  Turns out a staff member was vacuuming, which stirred up dust, which set off the smoke alarm.  I'm no longer the most recent person to set off the alarm!

"I Have A Dream."

Aw screw it, no one has that dream anymore, especially not with this president and attorney general:

The good: Minneapolis Public Schools want to decrease total suspensions for non-violent infractions of school rules.

The bad: The district has pledged to do this by implementing a special review system for cases where a black or Latino student is disciplined. Only minority students will enjoy this special privilege...

I wonder what happens to Asians. In educational issues that particular minority group is often lumped in with whites because they "succeed".  The message, then, is that only "minorities" don't succeed.  Good message! 

Why don't certain groups of kids succeed?  I've said it about a zillion times on this blog--culture.  And culture is not merely a racial construct.

Predictable Obamacare Result

You can't blame this on those greedy corporations, a school district is doing this:

Roanoke City Public Schools will become the first area division to outsource its substitutes to a New Jersey-based company.

Beginning Jan. 5, Source4Teachers will staff the city’s substitute teachers, substitute aides and substitute clerical workers.

The move to privatize subs will cost about $1.6 million, and it is unclear whether it will save money. Officials have said it will help tame costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, as well as the law’s tracking and reporting requirements.

It would almost be criminal if they didn't do this to save the taxpayers' money.

But let's be up front about what's going on here--an employer is responding to (dis)incentives built into a law by acting in its own interest.  What field teaches us that this would be so?   What else can that field teach us about Obamacare and its implementation?

It's Not Willful Suicide

A particular political party and ideology is intentionally killing California, and this is just the latest sign.  Twenty years ago would anyone have thought that this would become so mainstream that it could happen?  Of course not, it was a desire of the lunatic fringe whom no right-thinking person would give any consideration--and now it's happening:

On the verge of granting hundreds of thousands of drivers licenses to immigrants in the country unlawfully, the California Department of Motor Vehicles will extend its hours and offer more appointments next year.

In January California will join the ranks of states that offer driving permits to undocumented immigrants. The rollout hit a snag when federal officials rejected a proposed license design as too subtle but eased back on track after California redesigned the IDs to make them conspicuously different from conventional licenses.

The Obamacare Debacle

It passed without a single Republican vote in either chamber of congress.  Listen to the Democrats howl if Republicans ever tried to pass any legislation, much less a major piece of legislation, like that.

And they did it by lying.  They knowing lied.  They weren't mistaken about some point of fact, they lied:

MIT Economist Dr. Jonathan Gruber, widely cited as “the architect of ObamaCare,” recently committed a Kinsley gaffe, “when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say..."

This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes. If CBO scored the mandate as taxes, the bill dies. Okay, so it’s written to do that.  In terms of risk rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in – you made explicit healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed… Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage. And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really really critical for the thing to pass. It’s a second-best argument. Look, I wish Mark was right that we could make it all transparent, but I’d rather have this law than not.

...Apparently Dr. Gruber thinks it’s OK to lie to American voters when his allies are in power to enact policies that he wants but the voters wouldn’t. He then says American voters are “stupid” both for not agreeing with his value choices and for not figuring out the deception.

They lied, and it's not even working as planned. Forget the horrible roll-out, they aren't getting the sign-ups:

Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Monday projected that up to 9.9 million people would be enrolled in ObamaCare in 2015, millions fewer than Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates.

Federal health officials are projecting that ObamaCare enrollment will include at least 3.1 million fewer people next year than congressional budget analysts thought.

HHS, which previously declined to project 2015 sign-ups, said that between 9 million and 9.9 million people are expected to participate in the exchanges in 2015.

The figure was less than the CBO’s projection of 13 million for 2015 enrollment, raising questions about the exchanges' performance, compared with expectations.

How many of these are people who lost their insurance because of Obamacare?  How many are paying more now than they would for the health insurance they lost?

Socialism.  It would be a hilarious joke if it weren't so real.

At Least *Some* Students Were Disappointed At The Immaturity

And this is at Dartmouth, they of the Ivy League.  Here were some of the questions asked of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who spoke there recently:

A student at Dartmouth College asked Texas Governor Rick Perry Sunday if he would accept anal sex in exchange for $102 million in campaign contributions...

“Do you (Rick Perry) dislike bootysex because the peeny goes in where the poopy comes out?”...

“I know you have been very strong on all foreign policy issues, including Somali pirates, but what is your stance on butt pirates?”

I thought liberals were against anti-gay slurs. My bad.

The immaturity wasn't lauded by everyone:

“They were phrased in incredibly insulting ways, and I’m horrified,” Michelle Knesbach, president of the College Republicans told The Dartmouth. “We allow people to ask policy-driven questions, but when they’re phrased in an insulting manner, we try to avoid that, because it just detracts from the overall political discourse we can have on campus.”

Spencer Blair, the president of the College Democrats and a writer for The Dartmouth, also thought the questions were disrespectful to the governor.

“I think it’s really disappointing that anyone would undermine a serious political event with sexually explicit questions, and neither I nor anyone from College Democrats would ever condone such behavior,” said Blair. “We appreciate Governor Perry visiting campus, as we encourage any sort of political engagement and discourse here at Dartmouth.”

However, Packer thought the questions brought up legitimate concerns.

“People that are opposed to this act are opposed to it because they think that it hurts their political discussion,” said Packer (a sophomore who wrote the questions and distributed them beforehand). “I think the desired effect was to point out that their political discussion is not meaningful.”

Packer said the questions did not achieve their “desired effect.”

“Since the event organizers knew what we were doing before it happened, they sort of controlled the lens through which the questions were viewed,” said Packer. “The questions – they’re funny, right? I think they’re funny. I think a lot of people think that they’re funny, but since the event had control over the framing of the questions, nobody in the audience laughed. They booed.”

Someone named Packer shouldn't be making gay jokes, knowwhatImean?

How To Be Smart

1)  Be descended from Neanderthals:

"The genes for red hair and pale skin didn't match well enough to show a correlation, but I found a correlation for genes linked to other traits. There's a gene cluster linked to advanced mathematics skills, information processing, logic, analytical intelligence, concentration skills, obsession–compulsion and Asperger's syndrome. That cluster correlates very strongly. I can trace some genes back to the interglacial around 450,000 years ago, and others back to another burst of evolutionary innovation during the Eemian interglacial about 130,000 years ago." She rambled on with endless details.

Something wasn't right. She was linking genes for advanced mental skills to Neanderthals. "I'm confused," I said when she paused for a breath. "You're correlating genes linked to modern human intelligence with Neanderthal populations. What am I missing?"

"You didn't want to hear me, I knew that."

"No, I want to hear you. I just asked a question."

"You don't, because I already told you."

I looked at Beth blankly, realizing I was missing a key part of the puzzle. "You said these were Neanderthal genes?"

"Yes, they were," she said. "They weren't in the modern human genome until Neanderthals interbred with Cro-Magnons between 25,000 and 30,000 years ago."

"Advanced mathematical processing? Shouldn't that have been missing from the Neanderthal genome?"

"No, I found that Neanderthals lacked genes linked to successful socialization and management skills. They could count perfectly well, but they couldn't deal with groups. Socialization genes came from Sapiens"

"You're trying to tell me ..." I said, but my mental censor blocked the idea.

"That human mathematical intelligence came from Neanderthals? That's what the data say. The Cro-Magnons had the social skills. But that isn't all."

I stared at her. I couldn't tell that to the research council.

As usual, she couldn't read the warning look on my face. "The hybridization was successful in the Stone Age, but the environment has changed. I found that modern culture selects for socialization but against the Neanderthal traits for mathematics and intelligence," she said, and looked down. "I don't know how you'll survive when our genes are gone."

2)  Take drugs: 

Professor Carla Shatz of Stanford University and her colleagues have discovered a way to revert an adult brain to the “plastic”, child-like state that is more able to form new connections quickly.  The technical term “plastic” implies the ability to adapt or shape itself to new conditions.  The striking results were revealed through experiments on a protein expressed in brain cells known as PirB (this is the name of the protein in the animal model, in humans it is called “LilrB2″), which seems to stabilize neural connections.

Stability protects against loss of learned skills or information, but at the same time hampers the acquisition of new ones.  The scientists found that interfering with the normal function of the neuron-stability molecule PirB had the remarkable effect of reverting at least one part of the brain to a more malleable state that could easily recover from damage, rewire itself and learn new skills.  The study is exciting for not only its therapeutic implications, but also for the emerging field of brain and cognition-enhancing drugs.

3)  Don't catch the liberal virus:

A virus that infects human brains and makes us more stupid has been discovered, according to scientists in the US.

Do You Remember That Night?

I do.




It was unbelievable--literally.  Who could believe it happened, and so quickly?  The world changed that night.

In honor of that seminal event, as well as the upcoming Veteran's Day holiday, I link to what I still consider to by my best post ever (and I have over 9400 posts), Freedom Is A Little Piece of Broken Concrete.  Parts VI-IX describe that time.

Couldn't Have Happened To A Nicer Bunch of Socialists

Teachers unions spent big on the midterm elections and lost big -- dropping as much as $80 million on mostly Democratic candidates.

The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers spent their members' dues to support labor-friendly candidates in states like Wisconsin, Michigan and North Carolina, only to see Republicans win handily. Some critics say not only did they get little bang for their bucks, they may have further alienated members who don't share the organizations' politics.  link

Do the lefties still want to get big money out of politics?   Does Tom Steyer?

In the last days before the midterm elections, Tom Steyer, the billionaire environmentalist who spent at least $57 million of his own money to influence Tuesday’s outcome — more than any other single donor — set off on a frenetic get-out-the-vote tour to Colorado, Iowa and finally New Hampshire. There, he told business owners in Portsmouth that climate change is an economic issue, thanked college students in Durham for knocking on doors, and gave a pep talk to canvassers in Dover before they fanned out to collect voter data on their smartphones. After all that, Mr. Steyer appears to have largely wasted his time and money.  (boldface mine--Darren)

This Fake Campus Rape Crisis Is One Of The Most Foul Political Undertakings I Can Imagine

It's really sick, when you think about it.  We're supposed to pretend there's some horrific rape crime spree going on just so Democrats can get elected?  Does that sound normal or reasonable to you?  Or does it sound at least cynical, and just freaking gross?

And if a university doesn't play along, the Office for Civil Rights (where are you, Orwell?) shows up:

Rape and sexual assault are crimes, unless they occur on college campuses.

Then, the federal government believes untrained college administrators only need to be 50.01 percent sure that an accuser is more believable than the accused to brand a student as a rapist for life.

In a federal probe of Princeton University, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights faulted the Ivy League university for violating the federally recommended standard of proof for cases of rape and sexual assault. Read that again: the “recommended” standard of proof, not an actual law.

Princeton was using the “clear and convincing evidence” standard for its proceedings, which is a higher burden of proof than the federally recommended “preponderance of evidence” but not as high as the criminal standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt.

That’s not the only way Princeton supposedly violated the rights of the accuser (forget the rights of the accused).

“OCR determined that the higher burden of proof was one of a number of examples in which Princeton tilted the scales in favor of the accused,” Tyler Kingkade wrote in the Huffington Post. “For example, accused students at Princeton could appeal a decision made by the university committee investigating sexual assault cases, but students who reported an incident could not.” In the U.S. court system, retrials for exonerated defendants are forbidden as "double jeopardy."

Also, Princeton let accused students know what the charges were against them – an apparent “no-no” to OCR. Accused students were also told the names of the committee members who would decide their fate, were allowed to call witnesses and have an adviser at the hearing.

Accusers had these same rights, but OCR claimed they were not as obvious as the rights of the accused. A Frequently Asked Questions document laid out the rights of accusers and accused, and was referenced in the school’s sexual misconduct policy, but that was apparently not enough for OCR.
OCR also faulted Princeton for not finding men guilty in three cases.

Because remember, these sexual assault hearings aren’t about the truth, they’re about branding people as rapists.

This is not a snip but the entire Washington Examiner piece on the subject.

This Is What Happens When You Elect An Idiot For President

You know, the Lightbringer president who's going to end the war in Iraq?  The one who's been in office for 6 years now, and who is proud of his achievements in Iraq? 

Well, that's not how it's turned out, is it?  I remember just a few weeks ago he sent 300 more soldiers to Iraq, promising "no boots on the ground" and no combat role.  Now this:

President Barack Obama is sending up to 1,500 more soldiers to Iraq to train Iraqi and Kurdish forces to fight ISIS, in a deployment that would almost double the total number of American troops there to 2,900.

The White House said in a statement that it will also ask Congress for another $5.6 billion to fund the fight against ISIS. The troops will not have a combat role, and will operate from bases outside Baghdad and Erbil.

The president didn't want our troops to stay in Iraq.  He didn't negotiate with Maliki at all on the SOFA and used that as an excuse to withdraw, and now we have to risk more Americans just to recover ground that was gained when President Bush first sent our military there.

This man is an idiot.  He's a dangerous, arrogant idiot.

I Actually Support Harvard Here

This isn't some nefarious surveillance, this is doing a study on attendance:

Harvard University is under fire from faculty and students for secretly photographing about 2,000 undergraduates in 10 lecture halls last spring as part of a study on classroom attendance.

The experiment was disclosed at a faculty meeting Tuesday and first reported in The Harvard Crimson student newspaper.

Harvard computer science professor Harry Lewis asked administrators about the study during the meeting, saying he learned about it from two colleagues...

Students and teachers were not notified because researchers did not want to introduce potential bias into the study, Harvard administrators said. The cameras took pictures every minute and a computer program used them to count empty and occupied seats.

The study was done by Harvard's Initiative for Learning and Teaching, overseen by Vice Provost Peter Bol, and authorized by the school's Institutional Review Board.

Professors whose lectures were monitored were told in August and all gave permission for the data to be used in the study, he said. Students were not told and the images themselves were destroyed, he said.

To me this is much ado about nothing.

California Should Be Two States

The natural split is not Northern/Southern California, but Coastal/Inland California.  Here's the map, by county, for the governor's race:

Just about every map for every statewide race and ballot measure looks the same.

War On Women

Here's what a real (political, as opposed to ISIS-style) "war on women" looks like:

Libs are trashing Saira Blair, an 18-year-old Republican who just won a seat in the West Virginia legislature

Liberals are only for liberal women.

Obama Should Double Down!

Usually when one side wins big they offer “helpful” advice to the other side, and that advice usually is of the form “If you want to win you should be more like us.” Of course offering such advice is more than a little self-serving, and no one’s really going to take such advice when it’s offered. For obvious reasons!

Here’s someone on the losing side, though, offering advice to President Obama. Please! Take this advice! I hope he does! I’m not going to suggest that he does—because of course he wouldn’t take my advice, he being the smartest man in the world and all—but I hope he takes this advice. I really do. For very self-serving reasons—he’d be guaranteeing Republicans the White House two years from now:

The Democrats Lost Big Tonight. Why Obama Should Double Down