Women feel your pain

Malcolm Ritter says women feel your pain more:

NEW YORK --Bill Clinton said he felt others' pain. But a new brain-scanning study suggests that when guys see a cheater get a mild electric shock, they don't feel his pain much at all. In fact, they rather enjoy it.

In contrast, women's brains showed they do empathize with the cheater's pain and don't get a kick out it.

It's not clear whether this difference in schadenfreude -- enjoyment of another's misfortune -- results from basic biology or sex roles learned during life, researchers say. But it could help explain why men have historically taken charge of punishing criminals and others who violate societal rules, said researcher Dr. Klaas Stephan.

This is yet another difference between men and women.

Not saying sorry

A reader sends this story:

Lynne Truss was lamenting the fact that no one seems to say "I'm sorry" anymore. A school teacher asked her class "What word that ends in R-Y isn't used at home very much and should be used more often?" Finally a puzzled looking kid raised his and and said "Buggery?".

Usually we hear what some people call a non-apology apology. I make my kids say that they are sorry to each other.

Teachers abusing kids

The holyoffice blog says:

William Saletan notes that women teachers having sex with male pupils make up a tiny percentage of teachers nationwide, that their crimes generally involve sex with students 15 and older, and that they rarely employ violence or threats in coercing the teens to have sex with them. ...

The percentage of accused Catholic clerics was no higher than clergy of other denominations, and that it was dwarfed by the percentage of public school teachers accused of sexual misconduct ...

He makes the point that current hysteria about female teacher sex abuse is analogous to hysteria about priests several years ago.

The future of family court

British news:

A BISEXUAL man who answered an advert to father a lesbian couple's baby has won a landmark court battle to be one of the official parents, it was revealed yesterday. ...

Experts interviewed the youngster who told them she had two mothers -- Mummy and Ma -- identified as Ms A and Ms C.

In a bizarre twist, the girl's mother -- Ms A -- got pregnant a second time, with sperm donated by a homosexual who lives with another gay, and she also has a daughter aged three, known as E.

The lesbian couple now plan to "wed" under the recent change in the law permitting same-sex civil partnerships. The case is expected to set an amazing precedent following the boom in gay weddings.

Mrs Justice Black, one of England's top judges, ruled that the father was entitled to legal recognition that he had parental responsibility for the five-year-old.

She said that whatever the law may do to change the shape of family life, nothing could beat the fact a child had a natural parent.

The court appointed leading child psychiatrist Dr Claire Sturge to investigate the case.

The judge said: "Dr Sturge did not find D muddled about her family. She told Dr Sturge that she is lucky because she has two mummies. ..."

The two lesbians have agreed to increase his contact with D from once a month to every other Saturday, plus extra holidays.

Legal proceedings in relation to parental responsibility for the second child are pending.

This is a mess, and it will not be solved by having wacky child psychologists interview and assess the kids. The kids are not the crazy ones here.

Ordered to raise black consciousness

Ohio news:

Haines, who was accused of using racial slurs and threatening a black cab driver, must attend services at any one of Cincinnati's predominantly African-American churches.

"It seems readily apparent to me that you don't like black people," Judge William Mallory Jr. told Haines. "That's OK with me. But you have to understand that you are at the whim and authority of a black judge." ...

"If you want to get out of jail, you're going to have to raise your black consciousness," the judge said.

I didn't think that it was a crime to use racial slurs.

Feminists making the world worse

The new book Women Who Make the World Worse : and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports is already swamped with negative and spiteful reviews. It must have hit a nerve. Here is a positive review.

Update: There is apparently a campaign to trash this book. The Amazon reviews are absurdly negative.

Generalizations with obvious exceptions

The Dilbert blog says:

A friend shared with me an observation that I thought was provocative enough to get you all riled up. He says that when men tell a story about how their day went, it's usually focused on something good that happened. When women tell a story about their day, it's usually focused on something negative. BOCTAOE

That last acronym is Dilbert's own shorthand for But Of Course There Are Obvious Exceptions. It allows him to make sweeping generalizations.

Update: Dilbert has now revised his theory to say that complainers mate with non-complainers. Don't take his blog too seriously.

Copyrighted lawyer threat

The Smoking Gun posted a threatening letter including this:

We are well aware that Smoking Gun frequently elects to snidely disregard the content of letters from our firm, instead posting them on the website notwithstanding their designation as confidential legal communications and notwithstanding the legal arguments set forth in the correspondence. We request that in this instance, rather than having this typical knee-jerk response, ...

This letter is a confidential legal communication and is not for publication, and you are not authorized to publish this letter. ... Any publication disseminated or broadcast of any portion of this letter will constitute a breach of confidence and a violation of the Copyright Act.

The letter is from James Frey's law firm, and he is very upset that he might lose millions of dollars from a web site exposing the lies in his autobiography.

This is funny. I guess that I am also breaching the confidence by posting the above excerpt. These lawyer letters are amusing. Meanwhile, Frey sounded like a con man on the Larry King show. He sure fooled a lot of people with the biggest selling "nonfiction" book of 2005.

Update: Here is another confidential legal notice. The Smoking Gun is not intimidated by these silly lawyer notices.

Financial abortion for men

John Tierney write in the NY Times:

If the pro-choice side adopted a gender-neutral policy, then either the man or the woman would have the right to say no to parenthood. I don't know of anyone advocating that a woman be required to have an abortion, but there's another right that could be given to a man who impregnates a woman who isn't his wife. If the woman decided to go ahead and have the child, she would have to notify him and give him the option early in the pregnancy of absolving himself of any financial responsibility for the child. ...

But there's no reason that it couldn't be a little fairer. As Alito ruled, it's not an undue burden for a wife to notify her husband before an abortion. And it's not unfair, as Goldscheider proposes, for a single woman expecting child support to be required to tell the father as soon as she decides to keep the baby. If men are going to pay to play, they should at least know the score.

The column generated 7 hysterical feminist letters, including this from Tufts gynecology professor Steven J. Ralston:

In my professional experience, it is men who are least likely to be responsible when it comes to birth control and the least likely to use the form that they have the most control over: condoms.

What does he mean by this? His professional experience consists of examining women, and he says men are the least likely to use condoms? Are his female patients using condoms?

UK ceremonies

UK gay news:

Several newspapers, including the Daily Express, have reported that the word marriage is to be dropped from registry offices, apparently so as to not "offend homosexuals".

They say that rooms currently called "Marriage Suites" will now be called "Ceremony Suites" to stop lesbian and gay couples feeling neglected.

Feeling neglected?

Free booze benefits homeless alcoholics

Canada news:

TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) -- Giving homeless alcoholics a regular supply of booze may improve their health and their behavior, the Canadian Medical Association Journal said in a study published
on Tuesday.

Seventeen homeless adults, all with long and chronic histories of alcohol abuse, were allowed up to 15 glasses of wine or sherry a day -- a glass an hour from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. -- in the Ottawa-based program, which started in 2002 and is continuing. ...

"Once we give a 'small amount' of alcohol and stabilize the addiction, we are able to provide health services ..."

He calls 15 drinks a day a "small amount"! A lot of people would just pass out after 15 drinks.

Irony abuse

Charlie writes that the irony police should lock this nut up:

I learned of the execution of Stanley Tookie Williams while I was giving a series of lectures in Shanghai, China. I was struck by the many ironies surrounding this controversial death penalty case.

The fact that I was in China learning of the execution of a man in the United States was the first irony that caught my attention. I asked a Chinese university student whether he supported the death penalty. He said, ''Yes, but I am from China."

The second of many ironies was that an elitist, foreign-born governor who made his fortune by promoting violence in his films denied Williams clemency.

Perhaps the most provocative irony, however, that occupied my mind while I thought of the execution of Williams was the similarities he shared with Martin Luther King Jr.

At the very least, someone should send him a dictionary. None of those things are at all ironic.

Leftist movies that rank poorly

The movie Good Night, and Good Luck finished 2005 ranked 101 in domestic gross, sandwiched in between Munich Brokeback Mountain. The latter two movies were released in December, and are still in the theaters. They won't do nearly as well as you might expect from the rave reviews from the critics.

Most consequential woman of the century

NY Post book review:

January 8, 2006 -- WHO was the most consequential woman in American politics during the 20th century? ...

A good case might be made for Eleanor Roosevelt, though FDR's wife is perhaps more iconic than significant.Then there's Phyllis Schlafly, the leading lady of American conservatism. As a renowned anti-feminist during feminism's heyday in the 1970s, she was said to be out of touch with her times. But it turns out that she was firmly in touch with her country's spirit, as she mounted an astonishing campaign to turn back the Equal Rights Amendment, a bit of constitutional mischief that was once the sine qua non of political feminism.

There is a new book on her by Donald T. Critchlow.

Tips for meeting Afghans

Here is what to do if you meet a Mohammedan Afgan:

Eat with your left hand as much as possible.

If you are a man, ask a about his wife, daughters or sisters.

Walk in front of someone at prayer.

Ask a Muslim if he is a Sunni or Shiite.

Call him "Hajji," "Mullah," or "Akhund", and not "raghead".

If you see a picture or rug in a private home that you like, shower the host with complimentary comments and he/she will feel culturally obligated to give it to you.

Take off your shirt and leaves your shoes on. Better yet, sit with your leg up so that your sole faces the Afghan.

You run the risk of offending the Afghan.

Calero still in jail

The Calero couple is still in jail:

Deputy District Attorney Jon ... Yamaguchi said "given their lack of responsibility" over the New Year's weekend, he didn't want the couple released on their own recognizance.

The prosecutor also said he didn't want them released in case they wanted to confront the boys' grandmother, Liberata Holden of Manteca -- who had summoned the officers who found the boys -- "for the predicament that the defendants find themselves in." ...

Calero and De La Vega wore jail jumpsuits and sniffled throughout their arraignment Friday, which came just hours after prosecutors formally charged them with two counts each of child endangerment.

Such a charge alleges the defendants "willfully" caused or allowed the children "to be placed in a situation where his or her person or health is endangered." Each charge carries a maximum sentence of six years.

The law also requires that the endangerment be "under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death". I am still waiting for an estimate of the likelihood of great bodily harm, and what that harm is. I do not think that the DA has enough info yet to charge anyone with anything.

I also question locking them up because he might talk to his mother-in-law who schemed to steal custody of his kids. The Constitution allows him to confront his accusers. The DA seems to be particularly vindictive in order to satisfy news media folks who wanted to make a public example out of a bad parent.

Update: A reader writes:

I like your comments. If people dig a little deeper, Its not what it seems!

He has more on his blog. It is possible that Calero had a deal with the grandmother to watch his kids, but the grandmother set him up so that she could win a custody fight.

Single sex clubs banned

Wendy McElroy reports:

Last week, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against the Santa Rosa health club Body Central.

According to the agency, which enforces California's civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, the club's women-only policy violates the civil rights of men.

In 1995, the California Supreme Court decided a case in which a woman demanded entry into an exclusive men-only golf club. The court ruled that private clubs operating as businesses were required to follow state laws against discrimination.

I think that California should allow single-sex clubs. It is a little strange how liberals promote same-sex marriage but want to outlaw same-sex clubs.

Child neglect law

More on the child neglect case of 2 days ago.

Here is the California Penal Code:

273a. (a) Any person who, under circumstances or conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death, willfully causes or permits any child to suffer, or inflicts thereon unjustifiable physical pain or mental suffering, or having the care or custody of any child, willfully causes or permits the person or health of that child to be injured, or willfully causes or permits that child to be placed in a situation where his or her person or health is endangered, shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or in the state prison for two, four, or six years.

I listened to some radio talk show callers comment on whether parents should be prosecuted for leaving their home alone. They were just amazingly irrational and vindictive. For example, a caller argued that she raised latchkey children, but that was okay because she was working while the kids were left alone at home. If the parents left kids alone while partying, then she thinks that they should be prosecuted.

I don't see how this statute applies to the couple who left their kids home alone at all. The law is against willfully endangering a child in "conditions likely to produce great bodily harm or death". The kids were fine, and not in any significant danger that anyone has identified.

I am really appalled at the folks who approve of the grandmother's behavior. She refused to babysit the kids, had the (in-law) parents arrested, opportunistically seized temporary custody of the kids, and manipulated the kids into betraying their parents. I wouldn't give the kids to that grandmother. Most of these child care court cases are driven by custody disputes or vindictive relatives and neighbors, and busybodies are encouraged by cases like this one.

Here is another story:

The boys' father, Jacob Calero, 39, appeared at the hearing in a yellow jumpsuit and handcuffed.

Any decision made in the hearing will not be disclosed because representatives from all parties involved are under a gag order issued by Judge Lois Haight. ...

"The judge must determine what happened and why the parents acted as they did, and that could take some time."

So we may not hear what happened. The father has apparently lost his constitutional rights already.

Birth control pill risks

Science Daily:

In the January issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, researchers have published a new investigation measuring sex hormone binding globulin (SHBG) before and after discontinuation of the oral contraceptive pill. The research concluded that women who used the oral contraceptive pill may be exposed to long-term problems from low values of "unbound" testosterone potentially leading to continuing sexual, metabolic, and mental health consequences.

Here is another story.

Update: NY Times story here.

Local earthquake

An earthquake woke me up this morning:

The temblor registed 3.14 on the Richter scale and struck at 6:05 a.m. It originated 6.3 miles beneath the earth's surface, the USGS said.

The epicenter was just a couple of miles from my house.

Alien abductee indicators

58 common indicators of UFO encounters or abductions by alien beings:

Have had unexplainable missing or lost time of one hour or more.
Have been paralyzed in bed with a being in your room.
Have unusual scars or marks with no possible explanation on how you received them (small scoop indentation, straight line scar, triangular marks, scars in roof of mouth, in nose, behind or in ears, etc.)
Have seen balls of light or flashes of light in your home or other locations
Have a memory of flying through the air which could not be a dream, or many dreams involving flying. ...

These are also indicators of schizophrenia.

Home alone kids

San Ramon California news:

OAKLAND, Calif. A husband and wife were arrested today at Oakland Airport after returning from their New Year's celebration in Las Vegas.

Police say Jacob Calero and his wife, Michelle de la Vega, left his two young sons home alone last Friday morning while the newlyweds headed out of town to ring in the new year alone.

Authorities say the children's grandmother called police when she began to suspect the couple had left without the kids after being unable to find a babysitter.

Calero and de la Vega were married last year. The children's mother died in 2003.

The boys were aged 10 and 5, and were doing just fine at home. They had supplies of food. The parents were charged with felony child endangerment. No one has said what the danger was.

I don't see how this justifies a felony charge. The kids might have been in greater danger if the parents took them to Las Vegas.

It is amazing to hear people comment on this case on a radio talk show. Apparently a lot of kids these ages get left alone at home, both in the USA and the rest of the world, without many problems.

Some callers describe their own parenting practices, and dogmatically declare that all parents should do the same. One caller even said that she refuses to leave her cats alone, and hires babysitters to watch her cats.

Some callers blame the grandmother, because she was a busybody who was scheming to get custody of the kids. She had refused to take the kids during the trip. She now has temporary custody of the kids.

Birth rates and demographics

Mark Steyn writes in The New Criterion:

Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. ...

Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. ...

Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.

He says that demographics favor a Mohammedan takeover of Europe.

NEA pays itself well

WSJ article:

We already knew that the NEA's top brass lives large. Reg Weaver, the union's president, makes $439,000 a year. The NEA has a $58 million payroll for just over 600 employees, more than half of whom draw six-figure salaries. Last year the average teacher made only $48,000, so it seems you're better off working as a union rep than in the classroom.

The article also describes how the NEA gives money to left-wing causes.

Choosing women's work

Linda Hirshman writes in the American Prospect:

During the '90s, I taught a course in sexual bargaining at a very good college. Each year, after the class reviewed the low rewards for child-care work, I asked how the students anticipated combining work with child-rearing. At least half the female students described lives of part-time or home-based work. Guys expected their female partners to care for the children. When I asked the young men how they reconciled that prospect with the manifest low regard the market has for child care, they were mystified. Turning to the women who had spoken before, they said, uniformly, "But she chose it."

It is hard to imagine what "sexual bargaining" she was teaching those college students. It sounds as if they understood their self-interest a lot better than her.

David Brooks trashes her article for other reasons.

There are feminist bloggers who are very upset with Brooks. They argue that a woman shouldn't choose child care because a man wouldn't choose child care. I am a man and I have chosen to spend a lot of my time on child care. It seems like a reasonable choice to me.

Priests on trial for their beliefs

Italy news:

Signor Cascioli's contention echoed in numerous atheist books and internet sites is that there was no reliable evidence that Jesus lived and died in 1st-century Palestine apart from the Gospel accounts, which Christians took on faith. There is therefore no basis for Christianity, he claims.

Signor Cascioli's one-man campaign came to a head at a court hearing last April when he lodged his accusations of "abuse of popular credulity" and "impersonation", both offences under the Italian penal code. He argued that all claims for the existence of Jesus from sources other than the Bible stem from authors who lived "after the time of the hypothetical Jesus" and were therefore not reliable witnesses.

Meanwhile, the Vatican has charged another priest with heresy.

Women compete differently

Research news:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Research shows that U.S. women not only compete differently than men in the workplace, they also compete differently with each other.

"It's been such a taboo subject. To say women have problems with each other is seen as anti-woman, but it's not," said Nan Mooney, author of "I Can't Believe She Did That! Why Women Betray Other Women at Work."

"Women are afraid to raise a problem, so it goes underground, and it comes out in a twisted way. Why is it so hard to work with other women? Why are we so nasty to each other?"

Mooney said women aren't more competitive than men, but that they compete differently -- they often shy from direct conflict for talking behind one another's backs, sabotaging success and feeling threatened by other women, reported USA Today Friday.

However, some researchers say the debate of women competing more passive-aggressively than men is misplaced because employees compete differently based on their personality, not on their sex and the issue perpetuates a negative and untrue stereotype.

Note the politically correct denial. Such denials often follow research that confirms stereotypes.

String theory vitality

Not Even Wrong blog:

Gross mentioned the recent New Scientist article quoting him as admitting string theory was in trouble, saying that the article misrepresented what he said. At the recent Solvay conference he had said something like "In string theory we don't know what we are talking about", and the New Scientist reporter interpreted that as meaning there was trouble, an interpretation Gross disagreed with. ... Gross went on to claim that really string theory is a vital subject ...

Not many scientists brag about not knowing anything.

Example of failed psychotherapy

Grief therapy doesn't work:

What about people like police officers and firefighters who witness terrible events? Is it helpful for them to reflect on their experiences?

For years it was believed that emergency workers should undergo a debriefing process to focus on and relive their experiences; the idea was that this would make them feel better and prevent mental health problems down the road. After 9/11, for example, well-meaning counselors flocked to New York to help police officers, firefighters and rescue workers deal with the trauma of what they had seen.

But did it do any good? In an extensive review of the research, a team led by Richard McNally, a clinical psychologist at Harvard, concluded that debriefing procedures have little benefit and might even hurt by interrupting the normal healing process. People often distract themselves from thinking about painful events right after they occur, and this may be better than mentally reliving the events.

A lot of other psychotherapy doesn't work either, and much of it is harmful.

2005 Award for Political Incorrectness

Redstate.org says:

And the winner of the 2005 Award for Political Incorrectness is...(pan of vast audience with expectant expressions)... Phyllis Schlafly.

This past year Mrs. Schlafly took on the federal government's deepening alliance with radical feminism. In the process she debunked many of the Left's pet explanations for family break-down. ...

For 30 years the Leftists have waged a tenacious assault on society's bedrock institutions, including fatherhood and families. As the rest of us silently stood by, feminists branded dads with epithets such as deadbeat, abuser, and patriarchal oppressor.

And now Phyllis Schlafly has shed the light of truth on their evil scheme.

The text has links to her anti-feminist columns.

Getting thanked

Marilyn vos Savant answers this question in Parade magazine today:

I overheard a woman say, I did all that work and didn't get a word of thanks!" after she cooked a dinner at church. What do you think of people who expect to be thanked for the things they do and who get upset when they don't get thanked?
-Sue, Sylacauga, Ala

I appreciate their willingness to be helpful at all. The fact that they want to be thanked just shows that they performed their good deeds because they felt a bit obligated to do so, rather than simply out of a desire to help.

I don't think that Marilyn is correct. The volunteer wanted to help, and to know that her help was worthwhile. If no one thanks her, then it casts doubt on whether her help was worthwhile.

She may have a sincere and unselfish desire to help, and yet cease helping when she doesn't get any positive feedback that her help is doing any good.

Animal models prove toy preferences

An Evolution and Human Behavior study says:

The percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by boys (a car and a ball) was greater in male vervets (n = 33) than in female vervets (n = 30) ( P < .05), whereas the percent of contact time with toys typically preferred by girls (a doll and a pot) was greater in female vervets than in male vervets ( P < .01).

Some people think that girls only play with dolls because they are taught to play with dolls. Those people must have never had kids. There are some instinctual preferences, as shown by animal experiments.

Education Myths

If you think that schools or teachers need more money, then see Education Myths : What Special-Interest Groups Want You to Believe About Our Schools and Why it Isn't So, by Jay P. Greene. From a review:

Greene asserts that most arguments about inadequate spending are based on anecdotes not facts. He concludes that even if schools in poor urban areas were provided with more funds, there is no guarantee they would use the funds effectively. Other myths that he debunks: social problems such as poverty contribute to low academic performance, smaller class sizes produce improvements, certified teachers are more effective, teachers are underpaid, public schools' performance has declined, private schools are more racially segregated than public schools. These myths are perpetuated by powerful interest groups, including teachers' unions, asserts Greene.

I think that the schools would do better if they had less money.

Letterman restrained

New Mexico news:

Late last week, a Santa Fe District Court judge signed a temporary restraining order against talk-show host David Letterman alleging [sic] he has tormented a city resident for more than 10 years by using code words on his television program. ...

Judge are famous for issuing restraining orders without any valid basis, but this is ridiculous.

Academic political correctness

Some leftist academics want to wreck the career of Filipino-American named Kiwi Camara wrote "nig" in his class notes as a 17-year-old. Some amazingly intolerant leftists interpreted it as a racial slur.

The 16 expiring clauses

AP news:

Sixteen provisions of the USA Patriot Act expire Dec. 31 if not renewed by Congress:

Section 201 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to terrorism.

Section 202 - Gives federal officials the authority to intercept wire, spoken and electronic communications relating to computer fraud and abuse offenses.

Most of them are not too controversial.

Girls avoid Computer Science

Boston news:

Today, Souvaine chairs the Tufts University computer science department, which has more female professors than male. But few younger women have followed in her generation's footsteps. Next spring, when 22 computer science graduates accept their Tufts diplomas, only four will be women.

Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality. In the early 1980s, it had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering. And yet with remarkable speed, it has become one of the least gender-balanced fields in American society. ...

They view the dearth of women as symptomatic of a larger failure in their field, which has recently become less attractive to promising young men, as well. Women are "the canaries in the mine," said Harvard computer science professor Barbara J. Grosz.

It is not discrimination.

Top 10 Conservative Women

Human Events:

Top 10 Women in Conservative Movement
Ranked by the Clare Booth Luce Policy Institute.

1. Ann Coulter
2. Phyllis Schlafly
3. Dr. Laura Schlessinger
4. Bay Buchanan
5. Michelle Malkin
6. Marji Ross
7. Michelle Easton
8. Star Parker
9. Sally Pipes
10. Elaine Donnelly

Male Original Sin

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger

Male resentment of the self-righteous and automatic public support for women's interests and issues has been increasingly on the boil for some time. Civic celebrations of antipathy to men such as the Violence Against Women Act are finally generating specific and pointed responses by men fatigued, if still baffled, by the knee-jerk assumption that they suffer irredeemably from what I call Male Original Sin.

At my university as at countless others, one of the very first official greeting to students is a rape seminar predicated on the intrinsic danger males carry with them. And in family courts, the presumption of male behavioral malefaction has yielded heartbreakingly numerous cases in which men are charged with domestic violence to which courts overwhelmingly--often in brief hearings in which the male is not even present--issue temporary "restraining orders." These frequently segue into permanence, and award women the dwelling they've shared, financial support and the all-important privilege of custody--mothers gain custody in 66% of uncontested cases and 75% of contested ones. Less than a quarter of parents are awarded joint custody.

Judges issue such orders based only on the word of the alleged victim. It is small wonder the overwhelming majority of such actions are sought and achieved by women. It has been legitimately argued that there is a merciless postmarital racket of therapists, lawyers, judges and governmental advocates who prosper because it is so easy to define males as guilty.

Meanwhile, the publicly financed educational system is at least 20% better at producing successful female students than male, yet hardly anyone sees this as remarkable gender discrimination. While there is a vigorous national program to equalize male and female rates of success in science and math, there is not a shred of equivalent attention to the far more central practical impact of the sharp deficit males face in reading and writing.

He recommends the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Men.

Defending parental rights

A reader asks why I would side with the father in Thursday's post below, when common sense would indicate that he has some wacky attitudes that might be detrimental to the child.

I come to this case being a conservative and a rationalist. Conservatives believe in individual responsibility, parental autonomy, and freedom. The opposite view is characterized by the slogan, It Takes A Village To Raise A Child, popularized by Hillary Clinton.

I am also a rationalist who believes that decisions should be justified by logic and empirical evidence. The opposite view comes from people who cite common sense and cannot back it up with any evidence.

The court in this case attempts to second-guess routine and legal parenting decisions. I would be against such second-guessing of either the mom or the dad. I have no idea whether the dad's child-rearing theories are best for the child, and neither does anyone else. The judge does not give any rational justification for his decision.

Family court violates 1A

Free speech expert Prof. Volokh gives an example of a Louisiana court giving orders that violate the First Amendment. I have some comments there.

A friend commented that if the parents cannot agree about diaper size, then they cannot co-parent so the courts have to intervene.

No, that doesn't follow at all. All we can deduce is that the mom thought that she had something to gain in family court by voicing a complaint about diaper size. And that the court rewards parents who bring such complaints.

King Kong released

I just saw King Kong, and it was better than I expected. I was surprised at how closely it tracked the 1933 version. In particular, it was just as politically incorrect:

Pinkerton writes: Any movie that features white people sailing off to the Third World to capture a giant ape and carry it back to the West for exploitation is going to be seen as a metaphor for colonialism and racism.

Movie reviewer David Edelstein, writing in SLATE, notes the "implicit racism of KING KONG - the implication that Kong stands for the black man brought in chains from a dark island (full of murderous primitive pagans) and with a penchant for skinny white blondes."

Comparing the new film with the original, the WASHINGTON POST's Stephen Hunter observed, "It remains a parable of exploitation, cultural self-importance, the arrogance of the West, all issues that were obvious in the original but unexamined; they remain unexamined here, if more vivid."

What disappointed me was that the movie was twice as long as the original, and yet it offered very little that was not in the original. All the good scenes were direct copies. I thought that the $200M would buy something more.

Update: I just watched the original 1933 movie again. It is as good as I had remembered. In some ways, it is a more convincing movie than the remake.

Old footprints

NY Times science news:

What is one to make of the intriguing footprints found in Mexico?

The scientists who discovered them said last summer that they were made by humans walking in fresh volcanic ash 40,000 years ago. This seemed incredible, since no human presence in the Americas had been established earlier than about 13,000 years ago.

So geologists went to the scene, near Puebla. They came to an even more astonishing conclusion: the prints were in 1.3-million-year-old rock, meaning the prints were laid down more than a million years before modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa.

There is something seriously wrong with this story. If they are really human footprints, then they should be added to The 10 Most Puzzling Ancient Artifacts.

Study shows that preferences change

Freakonomics says:

Many scientists believe that a person's sexual orientation is determined before birth, a function of genetic fate. ...

But taken as a whole, the numbers in Francis's study suggest that there may be a causal effect here - that having a relative with AIDS may change not just sexual behavior but also self-reported identity and desire.

IOW, many scientists cling to a belief that is contrary to the data.

Now the author of the study, Andy Francis, finds it necessary to say:

The findings do not imply, in any sense, that homosexuality is morally wrong. This is a positive, not normative, paper. I do not want others to misconstrue my findings. All members of society deserve equality and respect. Virtually all liberal theories support this notion. I do not believe that it is necessary that sexual orientation be entirely biologically determined for homosexuals and bisexuals to merit and obtain equality and respect.

This is hilarious. You would think that a scientist could state the obvious without doing politically correct backflips.

Leftist movie flops

Critical acclaim for movies:

NEW YORK - The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures gave its best-picture award Monday to "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's sparse, black-and-white depiction of Edward R. Murrow's on-air battles against Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The group spread the awards around, naming Ang Lee as best director for the cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain."

I've predicted that these would be flops with the public. Nobody wants to see movies that idolize commies and gay cowboys.

A reader writes:

Rating movies on political ideology makes you sound like a communist. Also, you are factually wrong. Million Dollar Baby made over $100e6. The public did not hate it. Good Night made $22e6. It probably cost half that to make. These numbers are US and Canada box office gross. Foreign and DVD often match the domestic box office numbers. What conclusions can you draw from the comparison of popular success to the critical acclaim? Whatever you come up with I'll bet I can find lots of counterexamples.

Let's look at the gross for recent Best Picture Oscar winners.

Million Dollar Baby (2004) $100,492,203
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,027,325
Chicago (2002) $170,687,518
A Beautiful Mind (2001) $170,742,341
Gladiator (2000) $187,705,427
American Beauty (1999) $130,096,601
Shakespeare in Love (1998) $100,317,794

A lot of people read rave reviews of Million Dollar Baby, and went to see it thinking that it would be a female Rocky. Instead it was a euthanasia movie.

I don't doubt that movies can make money based on good reviews from critics. But leftist ideological movies never do as well as you might expect from the reviews.

Top dictionary lookups

Dictionary news:

The 10 most frequently looked up words and their definitions, according to Merriam-Webster's online dictionary site:

1. Integrity -- Firm adherence to a code, especially moral or artistic values; incorruptibility.

2. Refugee -- One that flees; especially a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution.

3. Contempt -- Willful disobedience to or open disrespect of a court, judge or legislative body.

4. Filibuster -- The use of extreme dilatory tactics in an attempt to delay or prevent action, especially in a legislative assembly.

5. Insipid -- Lacking in qualities that interest, stimulate or challenge; dull, flat.

6. Tsunami -- A great sea wave produced especially by submarine earth movement or volcanic eruption.

7. Pandemic -- Occurring over a wide geographic area and affecting an exceptionally high proportion of the population.

8. Conclave -- A private meeting or secret assembly, especially a meeting of Roman Catholic cardinals secluded continuously while choosing a pope.

9. Levee -- An embankment for preventing flooding; a continuous dike or ridge (as of earth) for confining the irrigation areas of land to be flooded.

10: Inept -- Generally incompetent; bungling.

Curious list. Some of these have obvious explanations. The press switched from the popular term "tidal wave" to "tsunami", so everyone had to look it up.

My hunch is that people had to look up other words because there confused by changing meanings. I always thought that a "filibuster" was just a delay in a vote, caused by a dissenter who wants to give some speeches. In the last couple of years, a lot of people have used it to mean blocking a vote from every taking place.

The Siren Song of Sex With Boys

This NY Times article surprised me:

Though it might seem that way from the headlines, women having sex with teenage boys is not new. A federal Department of Education study called "Educator Sexual Misconduct," released last year, found that 40 percent of the educators who had been reported for sexual misconduct with students were women. ...

But Professor Rind and others point out that Canada and about half of Europe have set the age of consent at 14 after recommendations by national commissions. To set it much higher, as most states do, they say, ignores the research, and the hormones.

I do agree with the article that it is a big mistake to lump all sex crimes together. Some are much worse than others.

Campus free speech

University free speech story:

[Jihad Daniel, an employee of William Patterson University, a public school in New Jersey] privately replied to an unsolicited March 7 mass e-mail from Professor Arlene Holpp Scala promoting a viewing and discussion of a film described as "a lesbian relationship story." Daniel's March 8 e-mail to Professor Scala requested that he not be sent "any mail about 'Connie and Sally' and 'Adam and Steve.'" Daniel went on, "These are perversions. ..."

The employee was reprimanded.

The prof is the one guilty of sexual harassment, if anyone. Prof Scala sent an email to Daniel promoting discussion about a lesbian story. Daniel responded with his opinion. If Prof Scala didn't want Daniel's opinion, then she should not have asked for it.

You can concoct any politically incorrect analogy you want, but I think that anytime a prof asks an employee for a personal opinion, the prof should be able to deal with any answer she gets without whining to the administration.

Abortion rate may not affect crime

The Freakonomics blog says:

Thanks to articles in the Wall Street Journal and the Economist, a working paper by Chris Foote and Chris Goetz that is sharply critical of John Donohue and me has gotten an enormous amount of attention.

In that working paper Foote and Goetz criticized the analysis underlying one of the tables in our original article that suggested a link between legalized abortion and crime.

Steven D. Levitt's main claim to fame is his theory that the fall in the crime rate is entirely explained by legalized abortion.

Now a new study has shown that the abortion-crime theory was based on some data processing errors. Levitt's rebuttal is that there is other data to support his theory. His theory may be wrong.

Ellen Goodman writes:

Somewhere along the way, the dividing line over gay issues picked up and moved. It's no longer between red and blue states, or left and right wings, but between nature and nurture. Or to be more precise, between those who believe that homosexuality is a choice and those who believe that homosexuality is innate. ...

Let's remember that the evidence is with those on the nature side of the dividing line. While we don't know the precise biology, the weight of research suggests that sexual orientation is indeed something we are born with. Perhaps there is a ''gay gene." Perhaps the Japanese scientists who found how a gene alters the sexual orientation of the fruit fly will find a similar switch for people.

No, the scientific evidence is against sexual orientation being innate, and it is very unlikely that any such genetic switch for people will be found.

As Goodman explains, liberals widely believe that people are more likely to support the gay agenda if they think that homosexuality is innate. So they promote these unscientific explanations.

The Myth of No-Cost Immigrants

Investor's Business Daily says:

Immigration Reform: Conventional wisdom says immigrants are not a financial burden to taxpayers because they work hard, pay taxes and rarely go on the dole. But it's a myth, and a new study blows another hole in it.

The University of Florida finds that immigrant families have been costing that state a net $1,800 per household per year, a financial burden much larger than previously thought.

The findings surprised the study's author, who is a pro-immigration Democrat. After crunching the numbers, economist David Denslow discovered immigrants -- legal and illegal -- were consuming much more in public services and paying much less in taxes than the average resident. ...

In fact, a recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that the average welfare payout to immigrant households, both legal and illegal, has changed little and remains about $2,000 a year, which is 50% higher than the payout for natives.

The 1996 welfare reform did not change the average benefits to immigrants.

List of annoying people

Iowa news:

STRONGHURST, Ill. ? An eighth?grader at West Central Junior High has been removed from school and may face a charge of disorderly conduct after school officials learned last week about a list that named students and school staff the boy considered irritating...

Amazing. I considered putting a list of annoying people on my blog. I had no idea that someone could get kicked out of school for that.

A Man's Right to Choose

Dalton Conley writes:

Many liberals who oppose Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court focus on his (losing) position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1991 case about a Pennsylvania law that would have required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. "Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband's interest in the fate of the fetus," is the most widely quoted part of his opinion in that case. ...

Judge Alito's thinking about the role of men in reproductive decision-making is in keeping with how legal thinking needs to evolve in this age of readily available DNA testing. Nor is his position contrary to national sentiment: a majority of Americans feel that the husband should be notified about an abortion.

His only problem was not going far enough, ...

The inequity is that the woman gets to make the abortion decision, but the man has to pay child support.

Destabilizing people and society

Catholic Church news:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican newspaper said on Tuesday that homosexuality risked "destabilizing people and society", had no social or moral value and could never match the importance of the relationship between a man and a woman.

The article by Monsignor Tony Anatrella, a French Jesuit and psychologist, said homosexuality could not be considered an acceptable moral alternative to heterosexuality.

The gay bloggers, like Andrew Sullivan, have also gone ballistic and started babbling about Nazis. (See Godwin's law on how people make Nazi analogies.)

Suppose instead that the news said:

A preacher said today that gambling risked "destabilizing people and society", had no social or moral value, and could never match the importance working for a living.

I would agree with it. I think that it is okay for people to occasionally gamble in their homes, or even to bet in Las Vegas casinos, but I also think that too much gambling has a destabilizing effect on people and society. The Vatican opinion is not radical at all.

Airline Seating Policy Demonizes Men

New Zealand news:

(CNSNews.com) - Two airlines "down under" are under fire after acknowledging their policy of not allowing an unaccompanied child passenger to sit next to a man. ...

"Most males in the world, I'm sure, are perfectly law-abiding, good parents, good fathers, brothers, whatever," he said. "They're basically accusing half the population of the world of being a potential pedophile." ... Both Qantas and Air New Zealand [airlines] have now confirmed that they would not seat a child traveling alone next to an adult male passenger. ...

The airlines did win support from one quarter. Children's Commissioner Cindy Kiro, a government appointee, commended Qantas and Air New Zealand for their efforts to keep child passengers safe.

Kiro said she doubted the policy was meant as a slur against men.

But her intervention drew a strong response from the Men's Coalition, whose spokesman Kerry Bevin said Tuesday the commissioner was not fit for her post and should resign.

"Kiro is telling our children that men are dangerous to children," Bevin charged. He also called for the airlines to make a public apology.

For Worsley, the incident was part of a far broader problem, which seemed to affect Western countries in general, he said.

"Men are being demonized in the media for a long time now. I think probably this is just society's reaction -- they think, 'We'd better start tightening up on everything.' It's getting to the stage when all men are viewed with distrust," he said.

This is a weird anti-man policy. I've never even heard of a man somehow harming a child on an airline.

Support for Pinochet

Comments on the Jane Galt blog praise Pinochet:

Pinochet is the only leader of our time who returned a democratic nation brought to its knees by terrorists back from the brink of chaos. Chile is today a prosperous and democratic state. Pinochet reinvigorated the institutions of the nation and laid the foundations of the most prosperous nation of South America.

If you want dictators to voluntarily give up power, you have to give them the same soverign immunity for their acts in office after they leave office that they have as long as they stay in office. Otherwise, the only rational action for a dictator is to cling to power as long as possible.

The comment that "Pinochet was a murderous dictator" is only partially correct. Pinochet was a "dictator" but he was not "murderous". The murder and terrorism that the communists unleashed in Chile would be more correctly termed as murderous. They took human lives without the mandate afforded to them by the state. They set off the chain of vents that culminated in the need for Pinochet to take power. Pinochet employed the force necessary to re-establish law and order to the nation.

In my mind Pinochet is the greatest leader in the second half of the 20th century.

He saved Chile from total Marxist ruin, and brought it to a remarkable free market revolution, much deeper and earlier that the Reagan-Thatcher revolutions. Thanks to that, Chile is now the most succesful and prosperous nation in South America, by far. And he laso restored a vibrant democracy.

The lefties and the press are denigrating him as a monster because he had the temerity to stand up to violent marxist terrorists and annihilate them -- there is no bigger crime in the eyes of the left than thwarting their revolutionary and murderous ambitions.

I'm not a Chilean, but I lived there for 2 years during Pinochet's regime, and his free-market revolution was something fantastic to behold. It was no totalitarian state (lamentably I have experienced that horror too).

So, three cheers for Pinochet, and long may he live.

The Left is cheering that this 90-year-old is being prosecuted for tax evasion. I'm glad that someone is defending him. He saved Chile.

Genes have it over means

Science news:

LONDON: Nature, not nurture, is the main determinant of how well children perform at school and university, according to a study to be published this week.

The researchers came to their conclusion by comparing how well adopted children did at school when they were brought up alongside parents' biological children. The relative effects of genes and the home environment were then separated out. Previous studies have suggested that the home environment, and in particular the level of family income, is the most important determinant of educational attainment.

But the new study, to be published in the Royal Economic Society's Economic Journal, will argue that while income and home environment account for about 25 per cent of educational attainment, inherited intelligence is responsible for the rest.

Doubling a family's income would have only a small effect on educational performance, say the researchers, who examined more than 15,000 children, 574 of them adopted.

Remember this the next time you hear someone say how unfair it is that rich kids do best in school, and that we therefore need universal preschool or better paid teachers or some other expensive remedy. The money is not the determinitive factor.

Numb3rs

I like the TV show NUMB3RS, and its portrayal of mathematics. It is just a regular TV crime, but instead of the heroes being cops, prosecutors (like Law And Order), or lab technicians (like CSI), the hero is a mathematician. The slogan is:

We all use math every day: to predict weather, to tell time, to handle money. Math is more than formulas and equations. It is logic. It is rationality. It is using your mind to solve the biggest mysteries we know.

The math is usually a little contrived, but the show obviously has some real mathematicians as consultants. There is a math angle to each plot, and it is usually clever, and as appropriate and well-explained as I would expect on a mainstream TV show.

Look at the above slogan. It is true that math is about logic and rationality, and it is much more than numbers, formulas, and equations. Most non-mathematicians do not understand this.

Some recent movies have featured mathematicians, notably Good Will Hunting, Pi, and A Beautiful Mind. These all portrayed mathematicians as being mentally disturbed.

No free speech in Austria

Euro news:

VIENNA (Reuters) - British historian David Irving, known for his controversial views on World War Two, must stay in custody in Vienna while he is charged with denying the Holocaust, a court ruled on Friday.

Vienna's state prosecutor this week charged Irving with denying the Holocaust in two lectures he gave in 1989. Denying the Holocaust is illegal under Austria's law prohibiting the Nazi Party. It carries a sentence of one to 10 years in prison.

It is my understanding that he doesn't really deny the Jewish Holocaust, but has stated some slightly unconventional opinions about how and why the German Jews were killed. Weird.

Starting an intergalactic war

Canadian crackpot alert:

(PRWEB) - OTTAWA, CANADA (PRWEB) November 24, 2005 -- A former Canadian Minister of Defence and Deputy Prime Minister under Pierre Trudeau has joined forces with three Non-governmental organizations to ask the Parliament of Canada to hold public hearings on Exopolitics -- relations with "ETs".

By "ETs", Mr. Hellyer and these organizations mean ethical, advanced extraterrestrial civilizations that may now be visiting Earth. ...

Mr. Hellyer went on to say, "I'm so concerned about what the consequences might be of starting an intergalactic war, that I just think I had to say something."

Note that he is not just worried about an interplanetary war; he thinks that the conspirators behind the Roswell cover-up might trigger a war between our entire galaxy and another galaxy. That is even out-of-range for even the science fiction books.

King Kong

I am waiting for the expensive remake of the 1933 King Kong movie. I am sure it will look great, but it will also be a poor substitute.

The original had a vision that was acceptable in 1933, but which is much too politically incorrect for today's audience. It is just too racially and ecologically destructive. I suspect that the new movie will try to somehow get the giant gorilla to climb the Empire State Building without offending anyone. I doubt that it will work. They should have created a new plot.

Parents rights in schools

A reader writes that the dicta in Fields v. Palmdale School District implies:

1) that parents' fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children "does not extend beyond the threshold of the school door,"

2) that a public school has the right to provide its students with "whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise."

3) that parens patriae (the country as parent) can be substituted for parents' rights

4) that "there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children" and that "parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed."

5) that if a child feels uncomfortable with the school's discussion of sex, the school will provide "a therapist for further psychological help."

6) that the fundamental right to direct the upbringing and education of one's children does not encompass the right "to control the upbringing of their children by introducing them to matters of and relating to sex in accordance with their personal and religious values and beliefs."

7) that once children are put in a public school, the parents' "fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished."

8) that this decision is based on "our evolving understanding of the nature of our Constitution."

9) that since the Constitution has evolved to create the right to abortion, the evolving Constitution takes sex education away from parents and puts it "within the state's authority as parens patriae."

This case has drawn some new allies for the cause of parental rights. The school should not have been subjecting grade-schoolers to such offensive questionaires. The leftist judge Reinhardt of the 9th federal Circuit likes to invent constitutional rights when it suits his favorite causes (atheism, abortion, sodomy, socialism), but doesn't want parents directing the upbringing of their own kids.

Sitting instead of standing

Bob Lonsberry says that men should stand up for something. Funny.

Unwed, Pregnant Teacher Gets Fired, Sues

AOL news:

NEW YORK (Nov. 22) - The New York Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal discrimination complaint against a Catholic school, charging that it unjustly fired an unmarried teacher for being pregnant.

"I don't understand how a religion that prides itself on forgiving and on valuing life could terminate me because I'm pregnant and choosing to have this baby," Michelle McCusker said Monday at a news conference to announce the suit. ...

The handbook says that each teacher must "convey the teachings of the Catholic faith by his or her words and actions."

Lawyers at the NYCLU, which filed the suit on McCusker's behalf, argued that administrators enforced the policy in a way that disproportionately affects women.

"The school used her pregnancy as a marker," attorney Cassandra Stubbs said. "How do they determine if male employees engage in premarital sex?"

It wasn't the Catholic Church who decided that men don't get pregnant.

The Church forgives sinners who repent, but it doesn't appear that McCusker has repented. She is intending to raise the baby without a father. The child has a right to a father.

Mohammedan polygamists

A reader sends this:

The riots in France have made the world suddenly aware of a reality which city dwellers in Europe have known for some years: that there are no-go areas surrounding almost every major European town. These have become virtually self-ruling enclaves, abandoned by European authorities and police. A case in point is the Swedish town of Malmo, which is said to be unique because creeping anarchy has spread to almost the entire town.

Another thing which many people have known, but which has never been said aloud, is the spread of polygamy across Western Europe. Since yesterday, when French officials, including one government minister, cited polygamy as a possible factor of social breakdown in the suburbs, the media are suddenly devoting attention to a phenomenon which many people have known existed for years: Muslim immigrants going home for a holiday and returning with an additional wife.

Censoring a question mark

Florida news:

DELAND -- A question mark imposed over a photo of a gay-pride flag prompted Stetson University officials to halt distribution of a student-run magazine.

The students who launched Common Sense, a politically conservative publication, say they're being labeled intolerant when it's the university that's gagging free speech.

The purpose of the flag is presumably to promote an ideology or cause that not everyone accepts. It is appropriate for people at universities to question any ideology. The university is in the wrong here.

373 painkillers per year

British medical news:

One in 20 adults takes at least six painkillers every time they are feeling ill, according to a new survey.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said patients were "misusing" pills and urged doctors and pharmacists to be on the look-out for patients who take too many.

Pharmacologists warned that people would become addicted if they took such levels of paracetamol, ibuprofen or aspirin. Britons are taking an average of 373 painkillers every year, the study revealed. The figure alarmed doctors, who said it was "staggering".

Wow. That is a lot more than I expected. My consumption is about 371 pain pills below the British average, so there must a lot of people who are far above the average.

Hollywood says that oxygen dropped

I just tuned into a TBS TV show called Earth To America! It featured Bill Maher saying this:

I've read that the Earth used to have 19% oxygen in its atmosphere, and now it has 9%. Now, I know that is not a fact that you will find in the Bible. And I know that it is not something that we should really care about like activist judges or boys kissing, but maybe it matters a little! (applause)

There were also a bunch of other Hollywood celebrities pretending to be idiots.

If the oxygen level really dropped that much, we'd all be very sick very fast.

Update: Michael Medved made fun of Maher on his radio program the next day. He also pointed out some howlers from R.F. Kennedy Jr. and others.

Congress supports parental rights

The US House voted 320-91:

RESOLUTION Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit deplorably infringed on parental rights in Fields v. Palmdale School District.

Whereas the Palmdale School District sent parents of elementary school students at Mesquite Elementary School in Palmdale, California a letter requesting consent to give a psychological assessment questionnaire to their first, third, and fifth grade students;

Whereas without the informed consent of their parents, the young students were instead administered a questionnaire that contained sexually explicit and developmentally inappropriate questions;

Whereas seven parents subsequently filed a complaint against the Palmdale School District in a Federal district court;

Whereas on November 2, 2005, a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of the United States District Court for the Central District of California in the case (Fields v. Palmdale School District) and held that parents "have no constitutional right ... to prevent a public school from providing its students with whatever information it wishes to provide, sexual or otherwise, when and as the school determines that it is appropriate to do so";

Whereas the Ninth Circuit stated, "once parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend, their fundamental right to control the education of their children is, at the least, substantially diminished";

Whereas in Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 401 (1923), the Supreme Court recognized that the liberty guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the Constitution encompasses "the power of parents to control the education of their [children]";

Whereas the Supreme Court in Pierce v. Society of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510, 534-35 (1925), highlighted the Meyer doctrine that parents and guardians have the liberty "to direct the upbringing and education of children under control" and emphasized that "[t]he child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations";

Whereas in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 232?33 (1972), the Supreme Court acknowledged that "[t]he history and culture of Western civilization reflect a strong tradition of parental concern for the nurture and upbringing of their children. This primary role of the parents in the upbringing of their children is now established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition. ... The duty to prepare the child for 'additional obligations', referred to by the Court [in Pierce] must be read to include the inculcation of moral standards, religious beliefs, and elements of good citizenship";

Whereas a plurality of the Supreme Court has stated, "it cannot now be doubted that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right of parents to make decisions concerning the care, custody, and control of their children" (Troxel v. Granville, 530 U.S. 57, 66 (2000) (plurality opinion));

Whereas the Ninth Circuit's decision in Fields v. Palmdale School District presupposes that "parents make the choice as to which school their children will attend" when, in fact, many parents do not have such a choice; Whereas the decision in Fields establishes a dangerous precedent for limiting parental involvement in the public education of their children; and

Whereas the rights of parents ought to be strengthened whenever possible as they are the cornerstone of American society:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that
(1) the fundamental right of parents to direct the education of their children is firmly grounded in the Nation's Constitution and traditions;
(2) the Ninth Circuit's ruling in Fields v. Palmdale School District undermines the fundamental right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children; and (3) the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit should agree to rehear the case en banc in order to reverse this constitutionally infirm
ruling.
[+/-] show/hide extra text

More info here.

Another meaningless spanking study

Duke researchers have published yet another study linking spanking to aggression in children. Some people will conclude that spanking is bad if it causes aggression, but that is not the case. A certain amount of aggression is normal and healthy in kids. None of these studies attempt to determine whether the increased aggression is harmful or unhealthy.

They also don't determine cause and effect. Apparently the spanking is not linked to any bad behavior in cultures where spanking is an accepted child-rearing tool. A Duke researcher theorizes:

"If children see that their friends are also being spanked it becomes a less aberrant experience," Lansford tells WebMD. "But when this isn't happening to their friends they may think that they deserve it more because they are a really bad kid or they may have a more negative view of the parent."

Or it may just be that families that deviate from cultural norms in one way are more likely to deviate in other ways. It doesn't necessarily mean that the spanking has any bad effects.

Prison for wild teen parties

Colorado news:

GOLDEN - An Arvada mother tearfully apologized Monday and was sentenced to 30 years in prison for hosting sex-and-alcohol parties for teenagers.

Silvia Johnson, 41, pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of sexual assault, and nine counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

Prosecutors said between 2003 and 2004, Johnson held 15 to 20 parties at her home and gave teens alcohol, marijuana and methamphetamines. She also confessed to having sex with two of the teenage boys.

Johnson also said in that interview that she resented what she described as a double standard for men and women. "I think what I always had a hard time with is guys who do it are considered studs," she said. "A girl does it, she's considered a slut."

She got a harsh sentence, but she is not going to prison for being a slut. If a man held weekly orgies with teenaged girls and gave them alcohol and illegal drugs, then he would also get put away.

The conviction also included some other charges.

Fat waist linked to heart attacks

Medical news:

A body mass index greater than 28.2 in women or 28.6 in men did indicate an increased risk of heart attack, but the relationship disappeared after adjusting for age, sex, geographic region and tobacco use.

Waist-to-hip ratio, on the other hand, showed a continuous relationship to heart attack risk even after adjusting for other risk factors. Those in the highest fifth were 2.52 times as likely to have a heart attack as those in the lowest
fifth.

This is more evidence that BMI is worthless. People with a BMI of 26 live the longest, even tho that is considered overweight.

Only have an infinite number

Criminal profiler and MS NBC analyst Clint Van Zandt just said this on TV:

We only have an infinite number of state troopers, but we have millions of Americans on the road who take a step forward, who say I will look and I will save somebody's life if I have to.

He meant to say that we have more civilians than state troopers.

Five questions for Mohammedans

Dennis Prager asks:

There are a billion Muslims in the world. How is it possible that essentially none have demonstrated against evils perpetrated by Muslims in the name of Islam?
(2) Why are none of the Palestinian terrorists Christian?
(3) Why is only one of the 47 Muslim-majority countries a free country?
(4) Why are so many atrocities committed and threatened by Muslims in the name of Islam?

When he gets the answers, he'll decide that it is not just another religion. And certainly not a religion of peace.

U.S. Scientist Quits Stem-Cell Alliance

WSJ reports:

A prominent U.S. scientist is withdrawing from an international collaboration to create human embryonic stem cells.

Gerald Schatten, a cell biologist at the University of Pittsburgh, said he was severing all collaborations with the laboratory of Dr. Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul University. ...

A 2004 news report in the journal Nature said at least one female laboratory worker had provided eggs for the project, an allegation that Dr. Hwang has denied on several occasions. Under U.S. rules, collecting eggs from women working on a cloning project would be considered unethical. In the original paper, published by the journal Science last year, the scientists said the eggs all came from anonymous donors.

I am not sure why that is such a big issue, but I'm glad that the scientists have some ethical constraints.

Update: Mike writes:

Just read today's NYT article on the subject and have to admit I don't get it either. It's considered unethical to pay a woman for eggs, but paying sperm donors is perfectly acceptable. Hmmm.

I think that the idea is that American scientists and medicos want to push policies that devalue human life, disempower individuals, and let licensed professionals play God. I've enabled comments, in case anyone has another theory.

Guide to Hiring Women

1943 Guide to Hiring Women:

9. Be tactful in issuing instructions or in making criticisms. Women are often sensitive; they can't shrug off harsh words the way that men do. Never ridicule a woman ? it breaks her spirit and cuts her efficiency.

10. Be reasonably considerate about using strong language around women. Even though a girl's husband or father may swear vociferously, she'll grow to dislike a place of business where she hears too much of this.

Snopes then goes on to say that the guide is legitimate, and:

The text quoted above is one such example. Although we know full well in the 1940s women in the workplace were often patronized, insulted, harassed, and treated as second-class employees in ways almost no one would find acceptable today, we have a hard time believing that even if we once held the attitudes that promoted this type of work environment, no one (even way back in 1943) could have been so crass to state them as baldly and condescendingly as in the article cited here.

I find the Snopes comment much stranger than the guide. Employers today are told much wackier things in order to avoid discrimination and sexual harassment lawsuits. Such advice frequently (and condescendingly) assume that women cannot handle situations that would be trivial for a man.

Affairs between pupils and teachers

British news:

Britain should drop its moral outrage over sexual relationships between pupils and teachers and accept that an "erotic charge" in the classroom can be an aid to teaching, a Sheffield University academic says.

Pat Sikes, an education lecturer, has written a paper in defence of pupil-teacher affairs, arguing that it is wrong always to cast students as victims when they are often the instigators of genuine relationships and suggesting that about 1,500 pupil-teacher affairs develop every year, the Times Educational Supplement reports today. ...

Dr Sikes argues that the change in the law in 2003 which criminalises sexual relationships between pupils and teachers if the pupil is under the age of 18, inevitably labels students as victims, when they can frequently be the instigators of genuine relationships.

I do not think that the USA has such a law, but such relationships might be illegal under ordinary statutory rape laws.

Brits believe in ghosts

CNN news:

LONDON, England (AP) -- More Britons believe in ghosts than in God, according to an informal survey published Monday.

Of 2,012 people who completed a questionnaire, 68 percent said they believed in the existence of ghosts and spirits, while 55 percent said they believed in the existence of a god. ...

Some 26 percent said they believed in the existence of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, while 19 percent believed in reincarnation. Just 4 percent admitted believing that the Loch Ness Monster was more than a myth.

Of those who believed in ghosts, 12 percent said they had actually seen an apparition and 76 percent said that TV reality shows about the supernatural and films like the spooky "Blair Witch Project" had played a part in convincing them that ghouls exist.

The movie Ghostbusters convinced me.

Lesbian couples don't have sex

Lesbian survey info:

Some of the most startling information about lesbian sexuality has come from a study by sociologists Philip Blumstein and Pepper Schwartz, published as American Couples' These researchers used a large and well-chosen sample and compared heterosexual married, heterosexual unmarried, gay male, and lesbian couples along a number of dimensions including sexuality. They found, for example, that lesbian couples have sex far less frequently than any other type of couple. Gay men have somewhat less sex in their primary relationships than do either type of heterosexual couple; on the other hand, gay males have the highest rates of extramarital sex. This means that lesbians in couple relationships are less sexual as couples and as individuals than anyone else. Only about one-third of lesbians in relationships of two years or longer had sex once a week or more; 47 percent of lesbians in long-term relationships had sex once a month or less. This is in striking contrast, for example, to heterosexual married couples: Two-thirds of these couples had sex once a week or more, and only 15 percent of long-term married couples had sex once a month or less.

Blumstein and Schwartz also report that the lesbians they interviewed preferred nongenital physical contact such as hugging and cuddling to genital sex. However, one-half of lesbians in couples with a low frequency of genital sexual contact said they are dissatisfied with their sexuality. (My guess is that this is the half of the couple that wants sex more than once a month.)

Think about that next time you hear an argument that homosexual couples are just like straight ones.

Mary Mapes

I just heard Mary Mapes on MSNBC Hardball plugging her new book, and she said:

If I had any myopia, it was because I didn't realize what a toxic political atmosphere we were in, and I didn't realize that there would be this this incredible swarming blog attack on CBS News, and I didn't know that they would cave into it.

Toxic?! She was the one who broadcast a silly attack on George W. Bush based on forged documents just before the election.

University of California corruption

John sends this SF story about more financial scandals involving Univ. California Provost and former UC Santa Cruz chancellor MRC Greenwood. Greenwood got payoffs for herself, her son, and her female "friend". It is not clear whether the friend is a lesbian lover or not.

Here is an earlier story about university payouts to a lesbian partner.

SF gun ban probably illegal

Election news AP story:

[San Francisco] Mayor Gavin Newsom has acknowledged the measure likely wouldn't withstand legal scrutiny, but said it had symbolic value.

He was talking about a gun ban. Last year he was talking about same-sex marriage.

Baby killers get off easy

CNN story from 2002:

Postpartum depression is recognized as a legal defense in at least 29 countries, including Great Britain, Canada, Italy and Australia, Oberman said. Those countries have infanticide laws, which state that when a woman kills a child under the age of 1 and she can prove that the "balance of her mind is disturbed" by reasons relating to giving birth, the maximum charge the woman can face is manslaughter.

"The practical result of these statutes is that these women receive probation instead of jail time and they receive sentences that require probation plus counseling," Oberman said. In those cases, she added, the women do not have to prove the much higher standard of insanity.

The laws vary between countries, with some covering a woman who killed any of her children, while other nations' laws only cover the killing of a newborn, Oberman said.

Strange. Andrea Yates drowned her kids, and just got a new trial.

Men laugh at the 3 Stooges

CNN Science/Health news:

Who is more likely to enjoy a good joke?

Study explains why Three Stooges appeals to men

The difference between the sexes has long been a rich source of humor. Now it turns out, humor is one of the differences. ...

Reiss' team studied the response of 10 women and 10 men to 70 black-and-while cartoons, asking them to rate the jokes for how funny they were. While the volunteers were looking at the cartoons their brains were being studied with an MRI to determine what parts of the brains were responding. ...

Arnie Cann, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, commented: "Given the findings in the current study, that women appear to use more executive functions, it could be that they are more engaged in scrutinizing the humor to decide if it fits their views on what is acceptable humor. Once they decide the humor is OK, they could be experiencing a relief-like response."

Once they decide that the humor is OK?! All humor is OK with me.

Just Whom Is This Divorce Good For?

Wash Post:

Many people incorrectly assume that most marriages end only when parents are at each other's throats. But the reasons can often be far less urgent, like boredom or the midlife blahs. Research shows that two-thirds of divorces now end low-conflict marriages, where there is no abuse, violence or serious fighting. After those marriages end, the children suddenly struggle with a range of symptoms -- anxiety, depression, problems in school -- that they did not previously have. The waxing and waning cycles of adult unhappiness that characterize many marriages are often not all that obvious to children. For the children of low-conflict marriages, divorce is a massive blow that comes out of nowhere.

Lesbian wins against natural father

Seattle news:

The Washington Supreme Court established what amounts to a new category of parents ? one that's the legal equivalent of moms and dads ? when it ruled Thursday that a lesbian who was neither the biological nor adoptive parent of a girl she helped raise has co-parenting rights to the child.

The biological parents are married to each other, and wanted to be the legal parents, but lost the case to a lesbian with no relationship to the child.

Smart women don't marry

Wired says:

The Sex Drive forum has been discussing Maureen Dowd's thought-provoking piece in The New York Times, "What's a Modern Girl to Do?" adapted from her upcoming book Are Men Necessary? When Sexes Collide.

The gist is that young women, disillusioned with feminism, are choosing to become sex objects in order to catch husbands who can support them while they stay home to raise children. And that women who succeed in their careers, who support themselves financially and perhaps even outrank the men they'd like to date, are desperately seeking ways to appear less independent and more, well, dumb, to appeal to men.

Dowd cannot find a husband for herself, but being too intelligent is not the problem.

Editor is husband beater

John sends this story:

The editor of Britain's biggest-selling daily newspaper, The Sun, was arrested overnight for allegedly assaulting her husband, a star of one of the country's most popular TV soaps, police sources say.

Rebekah Wade, 37, who was appointed Sun editor in 2003, was suspected of attacking her husband Ross Kemp, 41, star of popular BBC TV soap opera EastEnders.

A police spokeswoman said officers had been called to an address in south London following reports of an incident.

"A woman was arrested for alleged assault on a man and is now in custody in a south London police station," the spokeswoman said.

Wade, who used The Sun to launch a high profile campaign against domestic violence, was previously editor of its Sunday sister paper, the News of the World, where she had been the youngest editor of a major national newspaper.

I believe people are innocent until proven guilty, so let's assume that she is innocent. A lot of innocent people are arrested for domestic violence. It is still interesting that a prominent news editor who crusades against domestic violence can get arrested for it.

Characterised by promiscuity

This 2003 NZ essay says:

British anthropologist John D. Unwin studied 80 civilisations that have come and gone over a period of several thousand years. He found a common thread ran through all of them. In each instance, as the family deteriorated, the civilisation itself started to come apart. In all 80 cases the fall of the nation was related to the fall of the family. In most cases, the civilisations he studied fell within one generation of the fall of the family unit. ...

Even advocates of same-sex marriage concede their marriages would have to be different. They want to redefine marriage so that multiple relationships are normal. This is because homosexuality is characterised by promiscuity. Most "committed" homosexual relationships include casual sex partners. In one of the largest US studies of gay lifestyles:2

28 percent of white male homosexuals estimated they'd had sex with more than 1,000 partners

43 percent estimated they'd had sex with 500 or more different partners

75 percent had had 100 or more sexual partners

Homosexuals themselves say "marriage" for them has to be "open".

The essay just generated this reply:

Study co-author Dr Martin Weinberg says his study has been misused.

"There is nothing in our book that is relevant to opposition to a civil union measure," he told the website Happy Clapping Homos.

Yeah, right. Let them get married. Just don't expect them to act like married people, or you are a bigot.

Whistleblower to get fired

SF news:

San Francisco's Department of Human Services wants to fire a child welfare supervisor accused of downloading and passing around gay S&M porn pix -- hot shots that starred a psychiatrist from the city's foster care program.

Higher-ups in the welfare division are also facing possible discipline for moving too slowly to stop the photo pass-around, and for failing to report the supervisor's actions to the proper authorities. ...

As far as the department is concerned, however, the doctor didn't do anything that violated the city's work rules by appearing on an S&M Web site. He's not facing any disciplinary action.

The amazing part is that it is just fine for a city child psychiatrist to appear on a hard-core kinky porn site. Remember that if you ever have a social worker suggest that you take your kid to some highly-recommended govt child shrink.

Judges reject parental rights

The NEA (public school teachers union) brags:

Federal courts rule that parents have no constitutional right to 'dictate individually what the schools teach their children.'

Claiming a violation of their "parental rights," some parents have recently hauled public school officials into court and asked federal judges to overturn educational decisions they don't like. Their lawyers argue that parents have a constitutional right "to direct the upbringing and education" of their children, including the right to override the decisions of democratically elected school board members.

To date, they've not enjoyed much success.

John writes:

The 9th Circuit issued a bad parental rights decision today. Opinion by Reinhardt for a unanimous 3-judge panel. Holds that parents have no constitutional right to opt their children out of sex education or psychological surveys (nosy questionnaires).

The decision affirmed a federal district judge whose decision was praised in the above 2003 NEA newsletter.