Feb 20 2010

Gun free zone failure number 60?

Category: college,education,guns,higher education,societyharmonicminer @ 9:07 am

The other kind of IED (intermittent explosive disorder)
Much more at the link.

The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”

I’ve been to some tense faculty meetings. Meetings with outcomes that had the potential to really change people’s lives who were involved, in one way or another.

So far I haven’t had to duck and cover because somebody started shooting.  But it is starting to seem that the only people who respect the “gun-free zones” on campus are the victims.

Maybe I should start ordering my hoodies to be Kevlar-lined.

Just in case a deranged post-modern prof who gives feminist readings to medieval French poetry happens to go postal.


Feb 19 2010

G-G-G-Global W-W-W-W-Warming (It’s hard to say when you’re shivering!) UPDATE

Category: Al Gore,funny but sad,global warmingamuzikman @ 9:00 am

A recent group of headlines from the Drudge Report:

If I were a cartoonist I’d draw Al Gore giving a speech on global warming somewhere outdoors.  In every frame of the cartoon he’d have to pause his speech and put on another layer of clothing as the weather worsened and the temperature dropped.  The last frame would show him so bundled up that he could neither be seen or heard.

…..Hey, a guy can dream, can’t he?

UPDATE: I was taken to task over this original post.  Here is an example of one critical comment. There are others.

But your claim that a cold winter is “evidence” against global warming is downright foolish, and shows either a) an interest in misleading people, or b) a blatant misunderstanding of climate change research.

Now watch this archival footage showing a series of Democrat politicians claiming that a warm winter and lack of snow was concrete evidence of global warming.   Which just further underlines the fact that a) a double standard exists, and b) those who think anthropogenic global warming exists do so as a matter of belief rather than of fact.  It’s almost a climate religion.


Feb 18 2010

More formatting help:

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 11:01 pm

This:

<i>italic</i>
<em>emphasis, same as italic, usually</em>
<b>bold</b>
<u>underlined</u>
<blockquote>quoted</blockquote>
<strike>strike</strike>
<big>bigger</big>
<big><big>even bigger</big></big>
<small>smaller</small>
<b>
<i><big><blockquote>bold, italic, bigger, quoted</blockquote></big>
</i></b><i></i>

Made this:

italic
emphasis, same as italic, usually
bold
underlined

quoted

strike
bigger
even bigger
smaller

bold, italic, bigger, quoted



Feb 18 2010

How To Quote

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 9:05 am

For those commenting here who would like to do quotes that

look like this,

below is the string of text that produced this post.

************************

For those commenting here who would like to do <i>quotes</i> that <blockquote>look like this,</blockquote> below is the <b>string of text</b> that produced this post.

*******************************************

It’s a bit tricky to use comment fields to give instruction on how to use HTML, since when you do it, it BECOMES HTML.

Hope this helps.


Feb 18 2010

A Starr in a new role

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 8:14 am

Kenneth Starr will have his work cut out for him as president of Baylor University

Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who took on President Clinton over the Whitewater and Monica Lewinsky scandals, will be leaving his post as Pepperdine University law school dean this spring to become president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas, the schools announced Monday.

Starr has headed the Malibu law school since 2004. During his West Coast tenure, he also represented the supporters of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage, during a challenge before the California Supreme Court last year. Starr won the high-profile case, with the state high court upholding the voter initiative’s legality in a May ruling.

………..

Starr said he hoped to remain active in the practice of law in his new position but that it would be up to the Baylor Board of Regents to decide whether he should take on off-campus issues as he did in defending Proposition 8 while at Pepperdine.

…………….

In a statement posted on Baylor’s website, Board of Regents member Joseph B. Armes said Starr was “a fifth-generation Texan who, throughout his distinguished career in law, the academy and public service, has been an articulate advocate for Christian ideals in the public square.”

Baylor, of course, has had real difficulties internally in the last decade or two (including some failed presidencies), with a divided faculty, a divided administration,  ideological combat growing from the increasing secularization of the institution, and the attempts by some to encourage the school to retain its traditional values (it started as a Southern Baptist school) in the face of growing pressures to ape purely secular institutions.  it is by no means clear that “peace” is possible at Baylor unless one side or the other clearly wins, assuming that victory is not Pyrrhic.   It is not clear to most observers which side will win, though it seems to me that at this point the secularizers have the edge, or a bit more.

To take the job as president of Baylor, Kenneth Starr is leaving his role as leader of the Law School of Pepperdine University.  Has his time at Pepperdine, which is experiencing the same pressures as Baylor, though perhaps not quite so extremely, prepared Judge Starr for the task at Baylor?  Will he conceive his role as trying to keep Baylor faithful to its historic mission, or will he, Gorbachev-like, preside over a gradual surrender to the pressures of dissolution that will leave Baylor a thoroughly secularized school, with only an honorable mention for its religious origins?

I doubt even he is sure at this point.  Some people say being a university president is the hardest job in America.  Maybe.  I’m pretty sure it helps if you know what you believe, and if you take a position at a school that historically resonates with your beliefs. Some presidents see their role as fundamentally changing an institution.  Some see their role as preserving it.  Some see their role as growing it, whatever the cost.

That’s what remains to be seen.  I wish him Godspeed, in a very difficult task.  And I hope he sees the task as one of preservation first (probably with elements of recovery), with growth and change coming in as distant second and third.


Feb 17 2010

McLaren’s “new” ideas?

Category: church,religion,theologyharmonicminer @ 11:19 pm

Christianity and McLarenism: a review of McLaren’s new book by Kevin DeYoung

Brian McLaren’s latest book, A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, is two steps forward in terms of clarity and ten steps backward in terms of orthodoxy. A New Kind of Christianity, more than any previous McLaren project, provides a forceful account of what the emergent leader believes and why.

I think McLaren has strayed quite far from anything recognizable as “historic Christianity”… a fact of which McLaren seems quite proud.
Continue reading “McLaren’s “new” ideas?”


Feb 17 2010

Tackling the SuperBowl ad controversy – UPDATE!

Category: abortion,media,societyharmonicminer @ 9:29 am

UPDATE!  See the rebuttal ad at the bottom of the original post.

************************

The discussion before the ad was run:

And, in case you missed it, the ad:

You decide.

But it seems clear to me that “pro-choice” still doesn’t mean much more than “pro-abortion.”

NOW thinks that CBS shouldn’t have run the ad because “it might make a woman who had an abortion feel bad”.

******************

UPDATE!  It would seem that NOW has made a rebuttal ad to the Focus on the Family ad.  Here it is:

Many thanks to commenter Bob for directing my attention to this.


Feb 16 2010

Jack Bauer, the ultimate AARP member

Category: Uncategorizedharmonicminer @ 10:39 pm

I’ve commented recently on the incredibly peripatetic energizer-grandpa, Jack Bauer, on Fox’s TV show “24.”

Tonight has gotten really ridiculous.  After being stabbed and tortured with electrical shock, our later-middle-aged grandpa manages to grab the electric prod with his feet, hold it the chest of his torturer, rendering him unconscious, and then, with bound feet (!) and bound wrists (!) he does an incredible ab-toning move to get his feet above the pipe he’s hanging from, wriggles down the pipe, manages to break it loose, fall to the floor, and, still bound, hop-scotch over to the waking torturer and break his neck.

The show is turning into a caricature of itself.  I mean, he’s Jack Bauer, not Batman…  or the Shadow.

Maybe he has a secret stash of X-Kryptonite.

Temporary super-powers seems to be the only explanation.


Feb 16 2010

As it turns out, it’s truth that is inconvenient!

Category: Biden,Obama,politicsamuzikman @ 9:00 am

Our Vice President is at it again:  Just what kind of person does it take to trash and disparage the war in Iraq at every turn, then claim credit for its success?  Apparently for Joe there is no statement too outrageous, too inconsistent or too false.  But then truth is truly just a matter of inconvenience when you are a politician in power.

Our President is at it again as well.  Apparently there is no campaign promise too big or too small that cannot be broken.  But when you believe you are “the one” I suppose promises mean only what you need them to mean at the moment.  Am I the only one who remembers the oft-spoken Obama promise of no new taxes for those who make less than $250,00 a year?


Feb 15 2010

You’re on your own

Category: societyharmonicminer @ 12:12 am

3 Seattle bus tunnel guards watch brutal beating

A 15-year-old girl who was badly beaten and robbed in a Seattle bus tunnel as three unarmed security guards looked on told investigators that she thought the men would protect her.

The statements were revealed in court papers filed Wednesday against the teen girl accused of attacking her and the three young men accused of stealing her purse, phone and iPod. The four were all charged with first-degree robbery.

The victim told a King County sheriff’s detective that the group followed her from a nearby department store into the bus tunnel at Westlake Station on Jan. 28, and she deliberately stood next to the three guards.

The guards didn’t intervene, though. They have standing orders to “observe and report,” so they called police but did nothing else as another 15-year-old girl punched and repeatedly kicked the victim in the head.

Get used to it. Think about what it means. Consider your options. No one is likely to help you when you need it most. It’s all up to you.  So stay out of situations if you can…  and decide what you will do if you cannot.  You won’t have time then to think through it.

The USA isn’t quite as bad as Britain…  yet, anyway.  It’s still legal to defend yourself.

Mostly.   If you’re not too effective at it.


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