Category Archives: Media Criticism

Business, Economics, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Are Schoolteachers Underpaid?

8 Comments

No:

Most teachers have Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in education, and most people with education degrees are teachers. Decades of research has shown that education is a less rigorous course of study than other majors: Teachers enter college with below-average SAT scores but receive much higher GPAs than other students. It may be that a degree in education simply does not reflect the same underlying skills and knowledge as a degree in, say, history or chemistry. When we compare salaries based on objective measures of cognitive ability — such as SAT, GRE, or IQ scores — the teacher salary penalty disappears.

I’d always suspected that, but I had never actually seen the statistics. Colleges of Education should be abolished, or at least not eligible for federal funding of any kind, including student loan guarantees.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

How Honest Is The Obama Administration?

5 Comments

…not very:

Barack Obama wants to run for reelection posing as a crusader for clean government battling against the special interests. In 2008, I know that Obama convinced much of the press corps that he was running a “cleaner” campaign than his rivals.

Obama attracted some libertarian, moderate, and conservative support because he convinced people he would bring good government to the White House and curb the influence of special interests. Even if his is a liberal White House, the thinking went, at least it will be a HONEST liberal White House.

Team Obama has already indicated it plans to try to ride this wave again in 2012. David Axelrod pushed these lines on Sunday morning television. And now, liberal columnist Jonathan Alter, intimately dialed into the West Wing, is trumpeting this very argument. I quote Alter’s claims not to pick a fight with him, but because if Alter is saying it, you can bet this is the talk behind closed doors in Obama’s inner circle.

“He has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.”

But Obama frequently tells blatant falsehoods about important matters, and then in a Clintonian fashion explains how some interpretation of his words could be made to correspond to the truth.

For your consideration, I provide some counter-examples:

Lots of links there.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Occupy Wall Street Supporters

11 Comments

The comprehensive list:

Communist Party USA

The American Nazi Party

Revolutionary Communist Party

Black Panthers

Nation of Islam’s Louis Farrakhan

CAIR

Some big names in the political world have also lent support to the cause:

President Barack Obama

Vice President Joe Biden

Nancy Pelosi

International Leaders and Governments:

Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei

Hugo Chavez

Revolutionary Guards of Iran

The Govt of North Korea

Communist Party of China

Hezbollah

They’re uniters, not dividers.

Media Criticism, Science And Society, Social Commentary

What To Do With The Halloween Candy

26 Comments

Just eat it.

I agree. I have sort of a sweet tooth, so that’s one of the things I’ve given up on this paleolithic diet, but I figure if I’m going to break the diet, I might as well do it whole hog and get it out of my system. As the dentist in the article says, it’s better for the teeth to eat all the candy at once than to have a steady diet of it for weeks. The same goes to the glycemic effects, I think. If I overdo it on salt or sugar in a single meal, I can get back to the routine within a day or two. Also, I bought dark chocolate Hershey’s kisses, which the kids might not like as much, but will be heart healthy for me if I have leftovers.

[Update, a while later]

It is dusk, and the streets are empty.

This just validates my long-standing thesis that Halloween has been taken over from the kids, who used to go trick-or-treating, and used to be free range, to the adult baby boomers, who don’t want to grow up.