Category: Uncategorized

Lady Bracknell writes a lengthy and forthright screed against disabilism:

Start actively fighting for an end to disablism, and you will be knocked back more times than you are successful. You will have to fight the same battles over and over again. Your efforts will often be unappreciated not only by those with whom you are trying to negotiate, but even by some of those on whose behalf you are campaigning. But when it works – on those rare occasions when it actually works – I promise you that you’ll remember why you started doing it in the first place.

Word ’em up, sister. Why, I strike a blow against “treating disabled people in an unequal manner” every time I park my Porsche in a handicapped spot! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside to know that I am making my own small contribution to society by fighting for equal rights for everyone.

Four NFL sources confirmed the Vikings decided late Monday to part ways with personnel director Fran Foley, a day after he presided over a draft that has been widely criticized for several risky moves in the second round. But according to the sources, Foley’s demise was more attributable to an exaggerated résumé — which he revised April 21 after admitting four embellishments of his early work history — and concerns about his management style.

The Vikings have been nothing but one disaster after another for the last two years. Tice should have been fired a year before he was finally let go, then Scott Linehan could have been promoted and the Vikes would likely retained Daunte and Randy. Instead, we’re back where we were in 1997, with Brad Johnson at quarterback and no Randy, except we don’t have Cris Carter or Jake Reed either.

And while I’m glad that they managed to grab Tavaris Jackson, whom Phil Simms held in high regard, I would have preferred that they trade up to grab Jay Cutler. Unfortunately, Mike Shanahan appears to be operating at a rather higher level than the Vikings current brain trust.

Caitlin Flanagan confesses her sin against the female fascists in Time:

I am a 44-year-old woman who grew up in Berkeley who has never once voted for a Republican, or crossed a picket line, or failed to send in a small check when the Doctors Without Borders envelope showed up. I believe that we should not have invaded Iraq, that we should have signed the Kyoto treaty, that the Starr Report was, in part, the result of a vast right-wing conspiracy. I believe that poverty is our most pressing issue and that we should be pouring money and energy into its eradication. I believe that allowing migrant women and children to die of thirst in American deserts is a moral transgression that will stain us forever.

But despite all that, there is apparently no room for me in the Democratic Party. In fact, I have spent much of the past week on a forced march to the G.O.P…..

Here’s why they’re after me: I have made a lifestyle choice that they can’t stand, and I’m not cowering in the closet because of it. I’m out, and I’m proud. I am a happy member of an exceedingly “traditional” family. I’m in charge of the house and the kids, my husband is in charge of the finances and the car maintenance, and we all go to church every Sunday.

Of course, this also explains why the Republicans are moving left as well. The good news is they can theoretically embrace a numerical majority of the voting populace. The bad news is that they are no longer a right-wing party.

It is something for young feminist college girls to consider, in the unlikely event that they ever bothers to question their beliefs. If those who have instilled equalitarian beliefs in young women are so viciously opposed to traditional morality, marriage and children, is adherence to those beliefs more likely or less likely to allow those women to live lives that are compatible with the three?

The Baseball Savant refuses to limit himself to MLB:

To say that the USA didn’t medal is an indictment of something is preposterous. You are talking about a US team that didn’t feature Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, Jason Kidd, Vince Carter, Elton Brand, Jermaine O’Neal, Ron Artest, Vince Carter, Richard Hamilton, Gilbert Arenus, Rasheed Wallace, Chauncey Billups or Tracy McGrady. To say the 2004 Olympic Team is a representation of USA Basketball is insane at the highest level. Not only that, but you also have to factor in the notion that this team was made up primarily of players coming out of the NBA season that practiced a week before the season against foreign teams playing with each other forever is nuts.

The European players that made it to the NBA are great no doubt, but would you take Yao over Shaq? [Vox – No] Dirk over Tim or Kevin? [Yes, right now] Nash over Kidd? [No] Diaw over Vinsanity? [Seven days a week and twice on TNT] I’m not saying the US shouldn’t have won the Gold Medal. They should have, but making a blanket statement about the NBA is nuts.

I think when the Dream Team 1 featured guys like Bird, Jordan, Magic, Malone, Stockton, etc. we showed the world just how amazing our basketball can be. To say that a team full of American guys couldn’t medal, while true in fact, is nuts.

It’s like saying Trent Dilfer is better than Peyton Manning because he’s wearing a ring.

First, I didn’t say they couldn’t medal, I said they DIDN’T medal, which was an obvious mistake since they took the bronze. (I was thinking of the 2002 World Championships when they finished sixth.) To argue that Shaq, KG and Kidd weren’t at the Olympics is somewhat disingenous, considering that Tim Duncan, AI, Shaun Marion, Lebron, Carmelo, Dwayne Wade and Carmelo were all there. Considering that neither Kidd nor KG have won anything in the NBA and that Shaq commits an offensive foul every time he touches the ball, I don’t think it’s possible to argue that the USA has maintained the basketball supremacy it once possessed.

Basketball is a team game, but the NBA variant is more of a two-man game. The Detroit Pistons have demonstrated that the team concept can still work there, but it’s interesting to note that they have had success without the Superstar+1 format that has been considered necessary since the end of the Bird-Magic era and with a team comprised mostly of cast-offs from other teams. Two of those Pistons you mentioned above weren’t even invited to join that Olympic squad because they weren’t considered good enough.

There is every indication that merely collecting the best players is no way to build a team. Real Madrid tried that with its galacticos strategy, but despite having half of the FIFA European Footballers of the Year of the last decade playing for them – Zidane, Figo, Beckham, Ronaldo, Owen – they’ve only won two of the last eight La Liga titles.

Sure, there were other problems, such as Larry Brown being spectacularly ill-suited to coach a team of favorites, especially a team with three young stars-in-the-making. But to deny that nations such as Argentina, Lithuania and Italy have made serious steps towards catching up with the USA in basketball is as silly as those Europeans who still think of the US national team as an easy opponent in the World Cup.

(That being said, Italy, Ghana and the Czech Republic is a tough, tough draw. Group A or Group B would have much easier, especially now that Wayne Rooney is out.)

Noezoom manages to miss the point:

If you are aware of how little actual editing and fact-checking newspaper editors do… then this should shake the faith of all of those who believe so firmly in the religion of science.

newspaper editors do not have the authority to pass law in the religion of science (unless you’re defining the faithful as only those who casually follow scientific endeavors through common media outlets).

if anything, corrections and retractions should affirm faith in science because it shows that the self-correcting mechanisms are working.

No, but editors of scientific journals do and the New York Times stated that “journal editors are like newspaper editors” in that they simply don’t do any independent investigation of the submitted studies any more than a newspaper editor will go and interview the subjects of a submitted story.

The corrections and retractions don’t show that the self-correcting mechanisms are working, indeed, they show that the errors and falsehoods are so rampant and obvious that those outside the system are noticing them and calling attention to them. This is like arguing that the pedophile priest scandal should affirm faith in the Catholic Church. Retractions after getting publicly busted by outsiders is hardly a “self-correcting mechanism”.

By this strange definition, the justice system is a self-correcting mechanism for criminals. Where, exactly, does the “self” enter into the picture?

A high school teacher in Belleville, Ill., was arrested and charged with breaking the neck of a 17-year-old student and then leaving her to die in some woods, according to police. Investigators said Samson Shelton, 26, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, tried to strangle Ashley Reeves and then left her to die.

Shelton was with St. Clair County detectives when they found Reeves in a park in Belleville. She survived in the woods for 30 hours before she was found…. Police said the Shelton and Reeves apparently had a relationship, Local 6 News reported.

Those public schools just keep looking better and better, don’t they…. Sure, there might be a few bad apples at on the staff there, but I’ll bet the facilities are first rate!

From FASCISTI by Giordano Bruno Guerri

Secondo Emilio Gentile, il maggiore storico italiano del tema, al cui lavoro questo capitolo deve molto, “il xx secolo puo esser definito l’epoca della sacralizzazione della politica” e il facismo fu il primo esperimento di “istituzionalizzazione di una nuova religione laica” dai tempi della rivoluzione francese. Il culto che il regime dedico a se stesso dunque non fu soltanto un fenomeno di propaganda, di buona o mala fede da parte di organizzatori e organizzati:

Il problema e piu serio e anche piu drammatico. I riti e le feste di massa volevano educare per convertire, investendo i valori fondamentali e i fini ultimi dell’esistenza. La funzione della liturgia di massa andava oltre l’aspetto ludico o demagogico, e pure era presente: mirava a conquistare e plasmare la coscienza morale, la mentalita, i costumi della gente, e persino i suoi piu intimi sentimenti sulla vita e sulla morte. Nella socializzazione di una religione politica capace di cambiare il carattere degli italiani, trasformandoli in una comunita di credenti nel culto del littorio, i fascisti vedevano la principale condizione per gettare le fondamenta di uno Stato destinato a durare nel tempo e a lasciare nei secoli l’impronta di una nuova civilta.

Gli stessi fenomeni si verificarono nella rivoluzione sovietica e nel movimento nazista. Ma anche tutte le elite politiche ed economiche democratiche del mondo occidentale ebbero, nel primo dopoguerra, il problema del consenso: “La nuova epoca, quella di un capitalismo organizzato, in forte crescita e tendente a un consumo di massa, richiedeva un governo fondato sul consenso generale. (V. De Grazia). I regimi totalitari perseguirono quel consenso sopratutto attraverso un culto religioso dell'”idea”, mentre le democrazie cercarono maggiormente di soddisfare le esigenze materiali del popolo.

It is amazing to see the difference between the original sources and histories of those who actually experienced historical fascism and the revisionist summaries of the American academics who wished to use it as a means of whitewashing socialism. The falsehood of the specious claims that Fascism was embraced by the Catholic church, or even a synthesis of socialism and Catholicism, or that National Socialism was a Christian phenomenon is belied by the European historians, who are not exactly right-wing Protestants.

I’ll translate this later, but the essential point Guerri is making here is that all three of the twentieth-century totalitarianisms were manufactured religious cults with the State and People substituted for God. They were attempts to replace Christianity with a political religion, and the astute reader will perceive the ominous significance underlying the Lizard Queen’s “politics of meaning”, which, like its intellectual predecessors, specifically decries the democratic focus on satisfying the material needs of the populace.

From the New York Times:

Virtually every major scientific and medical journal has been humbled recently by publishing findings that are later discredited. The flurry of episodes has led many people to ask why authors, editors and independent expert reviewers all failed to detect the problems before publication….

A widespread belief among nonscientists is that journal editors and their reviewers check authors’ research firsthand and even repeat the research. In fact, journal editors do not routinely examine authors’ scientific notebooks. Instead, they rely on peer reviewers’ criticisms, which are based on the information submitted by the authors.

While editors and reviewers may ask authors for more information, journals and their invited experts examine raw data only under the most unusual circumstances.

In that respect, journal editors are like newspaper editors, who check the content of reporters’ copy for facts and internal inconsistencies but generally not their notes. Still, journal editors have refused to call peer review what many others say it is — a form of vetting or technical editing.

If you are aware of how little actual editing and fact-checking newspaper editors do – I caught three errors in my own column yesterday that the editor missed and asked him to correct them – then this should shake the faith of all of those who believe so firmly in the religion of science. And that slap at “widespread belief among nonscientists” must have stung those who consider themselves to be scientists-by-proxy based on their distaste for religion.

Now, science is a very useful tool. One would have to be a fool to deny it. But like logic, it has two-edges and it is possible to misapply it, to hide untruth behind it and to take its conclusions too far. Those who hate and fear religion often talk of science as if it is practiced by holy secular saints, when the reality is that there is more fraud and blatant money grubbing among scientists than there is on the part of televangelists.

What is the difference between an Oral Roberts who says that God will “take him home” if he doesn’t receive an amount of money and a scientist who applies for a government grant for a study based on falsified data? They’re both lying con men as far as we can tell, but at least those who give to Mr. Roberts have a choice, nothing is being forcibly taken from them backed by the threat of government force.

Critics of religion like to point to its evils and ignore its proven benefits. (In fact, they usually have manufacture the evils and try to blame religion for things which it bears no responsibility, like war.) But to be intellectually honest, one cannot consider the many good things which have come from science, (medicine, longer lifespans, safe childbirths, computer games), without also noting its obvious evils, (more and more efficient ways to kill more people).

The Bible has repeatedly proven to be more reliable than modern archeology, sociology and psychology. One can even make a case that it anticipated some aspects of modern physics, although that’s debatable. Some atheists wonder how an intelligent, educated person can believe in the Bible. I, on the other hand, constantly wonder how any intelligent, educated person can look at the massive fraud and many contradictions that permeate modern science and place their unquestioning faith in that.

RB wields the red pen:

As a former high school Industrial Education teacher who tried to make a difference, I fully agree with your sentence above from your WND column! I once had the audacity to flunk the star quarterback who only strutted around in the class like a peacock, and incurred the wrath of the administration. The superintendent, principal, coach and the counselor descended on me after I turned in my grade and declared that the school would lose its chance at the State championship if the guy did not play that coming Friday. They asked me to change his grade, which I refused to do because that would be unfair to the other students who diligently worked to earn a grade. Then asked what he had to do to get a good grade, they declared he would not be able to do all that when I showed him the list of assignments he failed to complete.

Having come out of the machining and manufacturing industry to get my degree and teach, teaching the concepts of industry as a prevocational exploration and preparation program and knowing that the future would be computer-operated machine tools called CNC, I dispesnsed with the “busywork” shop concept to placate the malconents and dummies in a high school daycare setting. I requested equipment to update the facilities, but was turned down due to $900 being too expensive. But a week later, I read in the local paper that the schoolboard had approved spending $2,500 for new football uniforms to keep their reputation as the best dressed team in the league.

Well, we can’t have the boys go out there not looking pretty, can we? And it costs a lot of money to redo all those uniforms with new, sufficiently bland, PC nicknames and regalia.

Of mice, men and things that begin with the letter P:

A renowned U.S. scientist who has documented fertility and sex changes — including decreasing penis size — due to environmental contamination says he wouldn’t apply pesticides on his own lawn.

Personally, I suspect a vast right-wing conspiracy between the fertilizer manufacturers, the spammers and the enlargement industry.