Business, Economics, Education, History, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Our Prussian School System

3 Comments

More thoughts from Glenn Reynolds on the public-school disaster, over at the Daily Caller.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: Meanwhile, back in the Fatherland:

Got that? Let me repeat it just in case. A German judge took children away from their parents because “he family might move to another country and homeschool, posing a ‘concrete endangerment’ to the children.”

In August, 20 armed police, equipped with a battering ram just in case, arrived at the door of this Darmstadt family and forcibly took four children, ages 7 to 14.

Was there anything wrong with the children? Nope. The judge — whose name, by the way, is Marcus Malkmus, in case you have a voodoo doll handy or wish to burn him in effigy — the judge admitted that the children were 1) academically proficient and 2) well adjusted socially.

He just didn’t like homeschooling.

Why? Pay attention now: this takes us deep into the heart of a leftist: because he feared that “the children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.”

The invocation of “tolerance” is especially cute, don’t you think?

As Glenn writes: “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state. Gleichschaltung!”

Business, Culinary, Health, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

The Latest California Idiocy

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Condoms for cooks’ hands:

So this law is in fact encouraging the very problem it strives to prevent. God, I’m glad I’m not governed by California—what a bunch of knuckleheads when it comes to food! Why don’t you people actually try to know what the f**k you’re talking about before legislating? Jesus.

I am continually washing my hands in the kitchen when I cook. This is moronic.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bullies

6 Comments

When they pretend to be victims:

If the ASA boycotters are receiving unlawful “threats,” they should file criminal complaints or commence legal action under anti-stalking or similar laws. Or they could call out those making the threats by name.

But unlawful threats do not appear to be what is at issue.

Rather, it appears the boycotters cannot withstand the withering criticism from American civil and political society.

The academic boycotters have lived for too long in a bubble in which their views predominated because students were too intimidated to speak up, other professors didn’t want to take on single-issue fanatics, and administrators were intimidated.

But we are not intimidated. As I stated before, this is the hill we will fight on. Lawfully. Intellectually honestly. And without allowing the academic boycotters to play victim.

Good for Professor Jacobson.

Take away their non-profit tax status.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Bridgegate

31 Comments

Why it’s a scandal, but the IRS targeting isn’t:

you know what is also something everybody would find “relatable”? Politicians who sic the tax man on others for political gain. Everybody has to deal with the IRS and fears it. Last year, we learned from the Internal Revenue Service itself that it had targeted ideological opponents of the president for special scrutiny and investigation — because they were ideological opponents.

That’s juicy, just as Bridgegate is juicy. It’s something we can all understand, it speaks to our greatest fears, and it’s the sort of thing TV newspeople could gab about for days on end without needing a fresh piece of news to keep it going.

And yet, according to Scott Whitlock of the Media Research Center, “In less than 24 hours, the three networks have devoted 17 times more coverage to a traffic scandal involving Chris Christie than they’ve allowed in the last six months to Barack Obama’s Internal Revenue Service controversy.”

Why? Oh, come on, you know why. Christie belongs to one political party. Obama belongs to the other. You know which ones they belong to. And you know which ones the people at the three networks belong to, too: In surveys going back decades, anywhere from 80% to 90% of Washington’s journalists say they vote Democratic.

Scandals are not just about themselves; they are about the media atmosphere that surrounds them. They are perpetuated and deepened by the attention of journalists, whose relentless pursuit of every angle keeps the story going. That is exactly what has been missing from the IRS scandal from its outset; Republicans in Congress have been the dogged pursuers, not the press.

…in the end, [it’s] because Christie is a Republican. Christie isn’t them.

Yup.

[Update a few minutes later]

Bridging the scandal gap.

Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Unprecedented Non-Warming

5 Comments

A new global temperature index:

What we see is that the halt in warming is without precedent in the recent warming period. As such, something *is* amiss with predictions of not only continued, but *accelerated* warming. The something that is amiss appears to be that:

  1. Sensitivity has been very significantly over estimated and
  2. Natural climate variability, whatever the cause, has been under estimated.

The former undermines the claim of drastic future warming, the latter undermines the claim that recent warming was uniquely attributable to anthropogenic forcing.

Let’s be absolutely clear: that represents a complete vindication of the skeptical position and a refutation of the alarmed position.

Anyone who disagrees is obviously a denier.

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