Apr 15 2009
Obamafiction: “Moderate” Taliban
Are these the moderate Taliban Obama wants us to believe in?
A Taliban firing squad killed a young couple in southwestern Afghanistan for trying to elope, shooting them with AK-47s in front of a crowd in a lawless, militant-controlled region, officials said Tuesday.
Doesn’t sound “lawless to me.” Sounds like too much law, of the wrong sort. More here, but the main point: there is no chance of “negotiation” or “appealing to the better natures” when dealing with people like this.
All we can do is win, or quit. And if we quit, we’ll just have to start again later.
Apr 12 2009
WHO RESCUED THE CAPTAIN?!?!?
US sea capt. freed from pirates in swift firefight
An American ship captain was freed unharmed Sunday in a swift firefight that killed three of the four Somali pirates who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, U.S. officials said.
So begins the the AP story about the rescue of the kidnapped ship captain, a story that never says who actually carried out the rescue. The entire story is written in passive voice, “The captain was rescued,” and so on.
Very, very odd. It is not even clear if it was US forces that actually did the rescue, or some private agency, or some other nation’s forces, or for that matter some Somali “friends” of the pirates who were persuaded by someone that it would be in their best interest to get the captain released, unharmed.
Speculations, anyone?
UPDATE: Here’s the real story.
Apr 09 2009
Unjust desserts
The Martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: April 9, 1945
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (born 1906) was executed on this day, April 9, in 1945. He had been involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler, and was hanged for that political action. He was plotting murder and got caught; non-Christians were undertaking the same action. His death is hardly the stuff of straightforward martyrdom, hardly as clear a case as Roman Christians being burned at the stake for honoring Christ above Caesar. Bonhoeffer’s death has nevertheless been widely acknowledged as a true martyrdom, a costly confession of the lordship of Christ.
More at the link.
Apr 06 2009
Send in the robots #1
Japan Aims for Walking Robot on the Moon by 2020
Japan hopes to have a two-legged robot walk on the moon by around 2020, with a joint mission involving astronauts and robots to follow, according to a plan laid out Friday by a government group.
I’ve seen prototypes of these robots in faculty meetings. I think Japan figures if they can design a robot that can survive a faculty meeting, then the airless, radiation-dense, meteor pocked surface of the Moon is not an issue.
Considerable work remains to be done on the communication interface, however. Early models are reported to use lots of words with no particular definition, like:
assessment
diversity
vision
essence statement
accountability
accreditation
inclusiveness
meta-<anything>
climate change
retention (don’t ask)
Also, robots have been heard to wander around the campus muttering, “dead white males,” and bumping into trees in the quad. The good news: their functioning appears undamaged by the collisions, since their behavior is unchanged.
Apr 03 2009
Jesus the anti-poverty activist?
It has become quite popular in many quarters of the Christian Left, from the “emerging conversation” to the old-fashioned New England liberalism of the mainstream denominations, to assert that the message of the Gospel isn’t primarily about personal salvation, saving faith, holy living, and the like, but instead is mostly about “the immanent kingdom,” the kingdom of God that is with us now, expressed primarily as concern for the poor, and (all too often) support for socialist-inspired approaches to “taking care of the poor.” The Gospel is portrayed (betrayed?) by these well-meaning folks as a reflection of the battle of the rich and the poor, with the poor being preferred by God, and the rich had just better watch out, or they might wind up going to the Hell that the Christian Left doesn’t really believe exists.
There are a few problems with this:
1) For most of human history, almost everyone has been poor. There really haven’t BEEN very many “rich” people in any society until pretty recently. Are we to believe that the exhortations of Jesus and the Apostles to seek God and live holy lives were mostly aimed at the tiny minority of rich folk down through time? This interpretation of scripture makes it mostly about the rich/poor dichotomy, and lets the poor mostly off the hook because their problems are the rich folks’ fault. Did Jesus come just to condemn the rich if they didn’t shape up and pay up? Or was His life, death and resurrection about a bit more than wealth redistribution?
2) The “rich” in Jesus’ time were mostly not merely wealthy, but disposed of considerable political power, with the ability to directly control the lives of many people. There was one law for the rich, another for the poor, and that wasn’t just the de facto status of being able to hire better “attorneys,” but was literally the state of the law. A rich man could murder a poor man, and perhaps only pay a fine, while a poor man who murdered a rich man would be executed. Shoot, people were sometimes executed just for theft… or less.
3) People in prison were mostly political prisoners, not mere felons. Felons were likely to be executed, not imprisoned, which cost too much. So visiting people in prison didn’t mean just visiting rightfully imprisoned criminals, it meant visiting people unjustly imprisoned for primarily political reasons. And note that visiting the prisoner was probably itself a risk, since it meant identifying publicly with someone who had piqued the rulers’ ire. Think Nelson Mandela, not Baby Face Nelson.
4) Jesus and the Apostles simply talked way too much about personal living decisions, moral behavior, and living out of love to divert the center of the Gospel into “social justice.” The poor are as responsible for showing love to the rich, and each other, as the rich are to everyone else as well. The poor are not given license to demand anything from the rich, any more than the reverse. Remember, the “rich” meant the politically powerful, not just people with an upper-class lifestyle. The President of the United States does not have the legal power to do to any US citizen what “the rich young ruler” could probably have done to those in his sway. When Jesus said, “To be perfect, sell your possessions and give the money to the poor, and follow Me,” what He probably meant was mostly, “Give up your direct physical power over others and follow Me.” That was the reality in that time and place… indeed, in most times and places in human history.
Having said all that, the “rich” do have a responsibility to do two things:
1) Give what they can and feel led by God to give, wisely placed to do the most good, consistent with meeting their responsibilities to others, which includes their families, the people who work for them, their customers (i.e., the people who benefit from their being economically productive), etc.
2) Support public policies that will have the effect of improving the condition of the poor. But this has to be done wisely, too. Mere handouts mediated by the government have proven NOT to lift people out of poverty, as a group. Successful economies do, though, by providing opportunities that no government program can sustain over the long term. No program of government aid has ever done as much as a vibrant, free economy to lift people’s condition.
Oddly, and to the contravention of the common leftist meme, many capitalists love big government programs, as long as they can get the contracts to service them. One of the biggest temptations of the rich is to use that power to push government programs that sound “caring” on the surface, and will result in the government sending money their way to carry out some aspect of the program. That’s why Washington DC is awash in lobbyists: precisely the rich, jockeying for a spot on the rail. If Washington DC wasn’t the fountain of government programs to “help the poor”, there’d be a lot fewer wealthy people and corporations there dipping into the river of money.
The big medical providers have positively loved Medicare, even as they whine about its restrictions. The drug companies love the new prescription drug benefit that Bush added for Medicare recipients. Ditto the crocodile tears. Price supports and agriculture subsidies to rich farmers are another prime exhibit. All of these were sold “to protect the little guy” and yet the primary beneficiary is people who already had lots of money, enough to hire lobbyists, while the rest of us pay higher prices (the poor pay those higher prices, too) and higher taxes because of those programs.
So: a big temptation of the rich is to use government programs (ostensibly to “help the poor”) to line their own pockets. But it’s hard to turn down free money, isn’t it?
The notion that the Gospel is primarily about “the kingdom on earth now,” particularly viewed throught the lense of class warfare, is simply not scriptural or historically grounded in either the facts on the ground at the time Jesus and the Apostles lived, or in events since. To wit:
1) If Jesus had been primarily concerned about the economic condition of the poor and downtrodden, don’t you suppose He could have done just a little behind the scenes tweaking to the climate, the growing season, etc.? Couldn’t He have managed to cause the unscheduled diversion of several Roman galleys due to weather and unexplained large waves and winds, so that the poor and downtrodden of Palestine could have kept the fruit of their labor from the evil Roman overlords? Couldn’t he have arranged for Herod to fall down the palace steps and break his neck?
2) All the welfare, relief and charity in ALL of human history (and I mean right up to the present) have not liberated as many people from poverty as free markets, free trade, and the division of labor. It’s a fact. You may not like it. Deal with it. If Jesus’ primary concern is for Christians to do what will have the most beneficial effect on the economic status of the poorest, then all Christians should be voting against statism (which always and everywhere adds to total poverty, and acts as a leech on the economy) and for more or less libertarian economic policy (which floats all boats). This is, of course, the exact opposite of the tendencies of “rich/poor class warfare” Christians, who seem always to vote for the state to victimize the poor by making them poorer. I’d like to believe it’s out of ignorance, but I’m not so sure.
3) Jesus simply never said He had come to impoverish the rich and enrich the poor, economically speaking. It is prooftexting of the highest order to twist His words into that interpretation, when His entire ministry and actions are taken in context. He died on the cross and rose again, but he didn’t write a self-help book, nor did he prescribe socialism as the ideal state. He did have a very great deal to say about the moral meaning of personal choices, made freely (both by rich and poor), and absolutely nothing to say in favor of the state forcing people to give to the poor at the point of a gun, which is the very thing most of the Christian Left votes for, feeling oh so spiritual and moral as they do it.
Oh, wait: I forgot, there is one scriptural reference detailing Jesus’ teaching that it’s good for the government to take money from people who earn it and give it to other people. It’s covered here, in a post from before the election.
Apr 03 2009
Diamonds falling out of the sky: Somebody call the FED
Astronomers catch a shooting star for 1st time
For the first time scientists matched a meteorite found on Earth with a specific asteroid that became a fireball plunging through the sky. It gives them a glimpse into the past when planets formed and an idea how to avoid a future asteroid Armageddon.
Last October, astronomers tracked a small non-threatening asteroid heading toward Earth before it became a “shooting star,” something they had not done before. It blew up in the sky and scientists thought there would be no space rocks left to examine.
But a painstaking search by dozens of students through the remote Sudan desert came up with 8.7 pounds of black jagged rocks, leftovers from the asteroid 2008 TC3. And those dark rocks were full of surprises and minuscule diamonds, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Nature.
Apr 02 2009
When the customer doesn’t matter
As you read the following, keep in mind that I’m a professor of 32 years standing. I get academia. I know where the bodies are buried. I understand procedures and policies.
My son, age 16, is homeschooled. He is a high school junior.
Recently, we enrolled him in an algebra class at a local junior college, and therein lies a tale.
From the top: It took 6 (six!) visits to the college just to get him enrolled, after applying for admission and submitting all the paperwork on the website. That’s because on each visit we were told something different about what it would take to get him admitted and registered. I won’t bore you with the details, except to observe that each time, a person behind a desk told us, with great authority, exactly what we had to do, and each time the next person told us something different when we went back. For the most part, the experience was one of parking on the dark side of the moon, walking 15 minutes, waiting in line an hour or so, listening to a minor functionary pontificate, realizing that today wasn’t going to be the day it all got done, then walking 15 minutes back to the car.
The website of the institution was especially entertaining. It promised all kinds of help, but didn’t deliver it. The classes had different prerequisites than the ones listed, the required paperwork was different than what was shown on the website, the “practice tests” shown for evaluating a student’s preparation for a given course turned out to be utterly non-predictive about the actual placement exams, etc.
But, after getting a different story each time we went in, we eventually did manage to get my son enrolled. Of course, he had to take a bizarrely timed section of the algebra course, because all the others were full. He barely managed to get into the one he did.
Then the fun really began. The textbook was $170 (!?!?!?). The instructor was, by turns, sullen and abrasive, a full timer who plainly needed to consider early retirment if teaching is so unpleasant.
After getting about three weeks into the class, my son developed a medical condition that required surgery, surgery that could be delayed a couple of weeks, but couldn’t wait till the end of the semester. The recovery time for the surgery was expected to be 1 or 2 weeks. Up to that point, he had been to every class, done every bit of work on time, and was doing well. We asked the professor to make an exception to her usually draconian attendance policy, since the surgery was unavoidable, but he would be able to do the work at home on schedule and keep up during the recovery process.
She absolutely refused, saying silly things like, “If I make an exception for him then I have to make one for everyone else.” I assume she means all the OTHER students in her class who are having unavoidable surgery that semester, but who are doing fine in the class and will keep up during recovery? I’m sure there is a very long line waiting for her to make such an exception for them, too.
I could not help but reflect that at the private university where I teach, I do everything possible to actively help students succeed, particularly students who have demonstrated a desire to succeed, and the ability and work-ethic to do so. I am not unusual in this regard. I found myself wondering when my son’s professor had lost her desire to actually help students learn, assuming she had it sometime.
Also, I wondered about the influence of disability laws in education, which require schools to do everything possible to help disabled students succeed. I guess temporary disability doesn’t count.
The main factor in operation is simple: the career and working circumstances of my son’s professor are not affected a bit by her attitude as a teacher, nor her unwillingness to make reasonable accomdations to help students succeed. She has a union. She has tenure. She would probably have to deliberately run over a student in the parking lot to get fired, or even disciplined. To her, it just doesn’t matter.
On the other hand, at my private university, we have a strong service orientation, because our students are our customers, as well as being our product. It matters to us that they succeed, not that we just jump through all the required hoops with them.
This is not to say that all teachers in public institutions have this negative attitude towards teaching and their students. I personally know many who have fine attitudes towards their students and teaching, but to the extent that they do, very little in the way of the institution’s function is responsible for it. They do a good job only because they are internally motivated to do so.
It’s also very interesting to compare the differences between private and public colleges’ admissions offices.
So: the next time you’re considering government funded healthcare for everyone, think about the comparative experience of attending a community college and a private one, and ask yourself which one you would like to characterize the responsiveness of your health care providers.
Mar 22 2009
Bailouts needed everywhere
In Germany, the legalized prostitution industry has fallen on hard times.
Hoping for more success, many women are driven from the clubs to the kerbs to sell their bodies on their own terms.
An increasing number of men on a tight budget are also picking up prostitutes on street corners rather than in pricey brothels or “Eros Centres.”
Some places have been forced to shut their doors and in January, sex-shop owners and porn producers pushed for state aid, taking their lead from the crisis-hit auto and banking industries.
Erotic trade federation official Uwe Kaltenberg, said that “economic aid would be judicious.”
Heitmann is now afraid that waning turnover could damage the industry’s reputation even more and that back-street prostitution could escalate.
Barbara Kavemann, professor at the Berlin Research Institute for Social Science and Women Studies, said the full impact of the financial crisis could not be determined because there was no concrete data.
“Firstly, prostitutes don’t legally have to be registered, and secondly, who defines who is a prostitute?” said Kavemann.
But Isabelle and other brothel owners do not need empirical data or definitions to confirm the impact of the credit crunch on the sex industry has been hard.
“The only thing we can do now is keep our fingers crossed and hope for better times,” she said, “and obviously I wouldn’t say no to a state-funded cash injection.”
I’ll bet. One thing about it: I’m sure they have some leverage with local government officials.
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