Right As Usual

I remember reading Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", and taking it's warnings to heart.  It was back in the 70's, when "teach-ins" and Earth Day were being used by the fledgling environmental movement.  I confess, without any qualms, I became a True Believer. Since then, life has changed.  I've taken college-level science courses, and taught science for over 20 years.  In that time, I've found that much of what is written about science in popular media is: Wrong Not scientifically-based Blatant lies With a small basis of reality, but wrong conclusions being made about the results of the studies During those years, although I've examined (and rejected) many of my former beliefs about nuclear power, global warming, environmental scares, and medical hoo-doo, I hadn't looked at the forerunner of the environmental leaders, and her seminal work. This article does. Published in 1962, Silent Spring used manipulated data and wildly exagg...

I found this picture of Obama on the web and it reminded me of this man.   Both arrogant, suspicious, and standoffish men. Share

I was reading the archives of Mark Steyn , and found this quote: Insofar as the “brutal Afghan winter” has any objective reality at all, all it means is that the key highway to Pakistan runs through some pretty high elevations, and has a tendency to get snowbound and impassable. Whether it needs to get  quite so impassable is another matter. I like the Afghans, God bless ‘em, but honestly it doesn’t speak well for a culture to have lived in the same place for thousands of years and never got around to inventing the snowplow. During the Afghan campaign, an Internet wag, Glenn Crawford, deftly summed up the different cultural approaches to unpromising climate - in this instance between the bleak Afghan plain and Nevada. Third World solution: eke a living out of the desert. American solution: “Viva Las Vegas!” One wouldn’t commend a den of gambling and fornication to every spot on earth, but, driving through the Sunni Triangle, I couldn’t help feeling the history of the Middle East...

Much has been made of this picture of the Dali Lama exiting the White House.  From the Christian Science Monitor: Many media outlets are taking it as an accidental breach of protocol, or as evidence of ineptitude. I disagree.  Obama didn't want to meet with the Dali Lama; he finally did so, but wanted to signal China that he did so as an obligation, not a choice.  Obama is the master of the deliberate insult, delivered without speech.  Who can forget his signal of disrespect to Hillary Clinton (April 17, 2008)? Or, to John McCain (November 3, 2008)? Obama is a mean, petty, classless man. Share

I can be heartened by this vignette from Mark Rudd: During the presidential campaign, just ended, editorials and letters in the student newspaper complained about “radical” or “leftist” faculty who bring their political views into the classroom. The clincher for me was when a young female student, a working secretary at the local airbase, sweetly told me that my crack about Bush’s never having read a book only increased her desire to vote for him. After that I professionally shut up during class. If only he extended that courtesy to the rest of the day. Share

I found this fascinating site  via Kathy Shaidle's Hippies: Still Not Dead Enough provides some background to events of the 1960's.  How does that relate to Obama? Andy Cornell, in a letter to the movement that first radicalized him, “Dear Punk Rock Activism,” criticizes the conflation of the terms “activism” and “organizing.”  He writes, “ activists are individuals who dedicate their time and energy to various efforts they hope will contribute to social, political, or economic change.   Organizers  are activists who, in addition to their own participation, work to move other people to take action and help them develop skills, political analysis and confidence within the context of organizations.  Organizing is a process—creating long-term campaigns that mobilize a certain constituency to press for specific demands from a particular target, using a defined strategy and escalating tactics.”  In other words, it’s not enough for punks to continually ex...

I've recently hooked up a wireless broadband connection to the internet - haven't yet managed to make it a wireless hookup for 5 people, as promised at the store.  While not totally easy to set up, it isn't that bad, either. Why did we spend money on this, especially in these days, when the goal is to cut down on monthly expenses? Den is taking 2 online courses, and needs access to the internet regularly. The internet at school is heavily censored; they block even sites we could use that are harmless.  Further, the tech people don't keep the JAVA and Flash downloads up-to-date; we can't use many educational sites because of that. The house we are staying in during the week has 2 TV channels, and we don't want to go to the trouble of setting up a cable/satellite account. I'm an internet junkie.\   Share

It was a tough week; about Wednesday, I was unbelievably fatigued for no apparent reason.  I doubled my vitamins, got more sleep, and toughed it out. By Friday, I was feeling on top of things, at least at work.  What can I say?  Due to the demands of my job (teaching two classes with a high-stakes test at the end), I'm having to spend inordinate amounts of time planning, assessing, managing behavior, and providing tutoring to those who are in danger of not passing.   It takes more time than you would think, hence the bone-tired feeling at the end of the day.  Most days, I walk more than 5 miles around my classroom - I've been tracking with my pedometer for some time.  Most days, I'm juggling all the demands on my time non-stop for 8-10 hours minimum.  Kids think I'm difficult about releasing them for bathroom breaks; they have 7 minutes between each block to take care of stuff, and 35 minutes at lunch.  I don't have the time between blocks,...