WebCogito

by Will Lutz 

Texas high school students won’t know much about economics, the Founding Fathers, the constitution, the development of common law, John Locke, Adam Smith, or the achievements of Ronald Reagan, if new social studies standards proposed for public comment are enacted. But they will be able to summarize Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a Dream” speech and they will learn to “provide a historical perspective of xenophobia and its impact on immigration policies in the United States.”

In House Bill 1 (2006), the legislature created vertical teams of college and K-12 teachers to look at the state’s curriculum and develop college preparatory standards. These vertical teams are to propose standards for approval by the Commissioner of Education and the Higher Education Coordinating Board. These standards will then go to the State Board of Education. The elected State Board is directed to incorporate college readiness standards into the curriculum, but statements of legislative intent during the process as well as a notwithstanding clause in the bill itself clarifies that the board has the authority to approve or reject the new standards. The public can comment on the standards until Dec. 1, after which time the Higher Education Coordinating Board will consider the public comments. The vertical teams produced draft standards for social studies, science, English, and mathematics. Of the four, the social studies are the ones most likely to prove controversial, as the bulk of them relate to diversity and multiculturalism. The current state Republican platform calls for repeal of the vertical teams and return of all curriculum authority to the elected State Board of Education.

http://www.dallasblog.com/200710301000882/dallas-blog/political-correctness-at-forefront-of-new-draft-high-school-standards.html 

So I finish making coffee, cuz I needed coffee, and the coffee thing is right in front of Bob’s (not his real name) office. So, I tell Bob (retired military, if his demeanor and medals on his wall are to be believed), “We have fresh coffee” and Bob says “Thanks, I’ll get some.”
Me: “I’d lie and say I made it just for you, but the truth is I made it for me, and it just so happens there’s more left over for other people.”
Bob: “That’s ok, I understand that. I appreciate it anyway.”
Me: “No problem.”
Bob: “The only other liquid that people would prepare for me is stuff that would kill me.”
Me: “You’ve made that many enemies over your lifetime?”
Bob: “Oh yeah… lots.”

“But it’s been fun!”

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Wikipedia: the concept that persistent opinions are accurate opinions

By Jon D. Markman
Special to TheStreet.com
9/21/2007 6:40 AM EDT
URL: http://www.thestreet.com/newsanalysis/investing/10380613.html

Satyajit Das is laughing. It appears I have said something very funny, but I have no idea what it was. My only clue is that the laugh sounds somewhat pitying. One of the world’s leading experts on credit derivatives (financial instruments that transfer credit risk from one party to another), Das is the author of a 4,200-page reference work on the subject, among a half-dozen other tomes. As a developer and marketer of the exotic instruments himself over the past 30 years, he seemed like the ideal industry insider to help us get to the bottom of the recent debt crunch – and I expected him to defend and explain the practice. I started by asking the Calcutta-born Australian whether the credit crisis was in what Americans would call the “third inning.” This was pretty amusing, it seemed, judging from the laughter. So I tried again. “Second inning?” More laughter. “First?” Still too optimistic. Das, who knows as much about global money flows as anyone in the world, stopped chuckling long enough to suggest that we’re actually still in the middle of the national anthem before a game destined to go into extra innings. And it won’t end well for the global economy.

Read the rest of this entry »

“Helicopter” Ben Bernanke lived up to his nickname last week when he slashed the Federal Reserve’s key federal funds rate, pumping cheap money into the economy in the same way that a firefighting helicopter drops water onto a forest fire.The fire that Bernanke hopes to put out is the Great American Mortgage Crisis, which has burned brighter and hotter than many economists had previously thought possible.

The people who cheered loudest over Bernanke’s move were the Wall Street financiers who helped the mortgage crisis occur in the first place, doling out cheap money supplied by Bernanke’s predecessor, Alan “Goldilocks” Greenspan.

But in the world beyond Wall Street’s movers and shakers and CNBC’s talking heads, the reaction was a bit different.

Read the rest of this entry »

Taken from the National Review

Point and counterpoint:

Since the late 1960s, much of the North Atlantic Ocean has become less salty, in part due to increases in fresh water runoff induced by global warming, scientists say.

—Michael Schirber, LiveScience, 29 June 2005

——————-

The surface waters of the North Atlantic are getting saltier, suggests a new study of records spanning over 50 years. They found that during this time, the layer of water that makes up the top 400 metres has gradually become saltier. The seawater is probably becoming saltier due to global warming, Boyer says.

—Catherine Brahic, New Scientist, 23 August 2007

Whatever the anomaly, the cause is global warming.

California State Senator Tom McClintock gave this speech at the Western Conservative Political Action Conference. Published On 10-18-2007 , 3:35 PM
Speech was given on October 12, 2007 in Newport Beach.

You have extended me a very dangerous invitation tonight – to speak to a gathering of political conservatives on the day that Al Gore has received the Nobel Peace Prize for discovering that the earth’s climate is changing.

I’ve heard that he’s going to contribute half of his prize money to environmental causes and use the other half to pay his electricity bill. And anything left over will come in handy to help pay for the fleet of private jets that allow him to travel around the world to tell us that you and I need to ride our bikes to work.

You have to admit, there is a certain Helmslyesque quality to it all – “We don’t conserve – only the little people conserve.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Read a recently posted review of Ender’s Game at NeoLibrarium.com

Read a quick review about it at ZDNet. Note that this is still a Beta version, so download and install at your own risk.