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June 30, 2005
I Am Also Reading
I am also currently reading No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning, which is decent, but does not have much new information. Mostly it says that in minority schools where discipline is strictly enforced and where teachers, kids, and parents want to be there and are willing to work hard, the racial gap in learning disappears. That may not sound like a radical idea at first, but according to most of the public teachers I know this is not how many of the teachers, students, and parents they work with act. I also recently finished Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. I had heard most of the ideas in this book before as well, but never in this much detail. Emotional Intelligence was an interesting contrast with Closing the Gap, although I do not know how much the authors would disagree with each other overall. Closing the Gap argues that test scores like the SAT are one of the best measures of future success, which is why the authors think the key to ending poverty among minorities is improving primary and secondary schooling and ultimately improving test scores. In Emotional Intelligence Goleman argues instead that emotional intelligence (skills such as self discipline and empathy) is the best measure of future success. I suspect that both are good measures that complement each other and that increasing one sort of intelligence will usually help to increase the other.
I am now on tape 9 of 21 of David McCulloughs biography of John Adams and am halfway through I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. I watched the movie version of I, Robot the other night and although it had some decent parts, it was not nearly as thoughtful as the book has been so far. A few of the action scenes were very unbelievable as well. I am also about halfway through Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the Whitehouse which contains essays on each president by people like Lynn Cheney, John McCain, and Glenn Reynolds. The appendix contains an interesting survey of academics that rated each president based on different areas like law and foreign policy. The interesting part of the survey was that unlike most other surveys that rank presidents, this surveys participants were made up of an equal number of liberals, moderates, and conservatives in an attempt to limit partisan bias in the results. I have read up to the chapter on Ulysses S. Grant so far and the essay on Grant was the only one that has changed my opinion of that particular president for the better.
Posted by Pete at 07:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Homicide
After reading a recomendation by Jack Dunphy in National Review a few months ago I decided to read Homicide: A year on the Killing Streets by David Simon. It was often a depressing book that follows a squad of Baltimore detectives as they investigate dozens of murders and other deaths across the city. The most depressing part of the book was when Simon estimated that if you committed a murder in Baltimore there was only a 30-40% chance that you would actually go to prison for it. The other startling information was how often people would confess while being interrogated (while others volunteered to the police that they murdered people without even being asked) and how different communities reacted to violence, with some groups not talking to police at all while others would give the police too much information. I definitely could not do that job with the long inconsistent hours and the constant dealing with the worst types of people. The worst part would be the assumption that everyone you dealt with was always lying and that it was your job to out smart and often to out lie them. I definitely lack the ability to match names and faces as well as most of the detectives in the book. The book did have its lighter moments with one detective constantly asking another new detective for a quarter which he always pocketed. My favorite anecdote was the local kid who always stole the pile of cash in street craps games until one day his fellow gamblers got tired of it and shot him. When asked why they did not just kick him out of the games earlier they said they couldn't because "this is America."
Posted by Pete at 07:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 28, 2005
My Senator on Kelo
Senator John Cornyn (R TX) is doing what he can to limit the effects of the Supreme Court Kelo decision and is trying to make sure the Federal government does not help local governments to abuse eminent domain by using property in non public ways:
'It is appropriate for Congress to take action, consistent with its limited powers under the Constitution, to restore the vital protections of the Fifth Amendment and to protect homes, small businesses, and other private property rights against unreasonable government use of the power of eminent domain,' Cornyn said. 'This legislation would declare Congresss view that the power of eminent domain should be exercised only for public use, as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, and that this power to seize homes, small businesses, and other private property should be reserved only for true public uses. Most importantly, the power of eminent domain should not be used simply to further private economic development.'
Posted by Pete at 06:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Communists Still Run Berlin
I went to Check Point Charlie about 11 years ago. It honors those slain while trying to flee from communism in Germany. Now a group led by former East German politicians is going to tear down the memorial to the slain this 4th of July.
We didn't think it could get much worse in Germany...well, it just did. Davids Medienkritik recently learned that the Berlin city government, made up of a coalition between the SPD (Gerhard Schroeder's Social-Democrats) and the PDS (former SED party that ran Communist East Germany), has decided to allow the razing of the Checkpoint Charlie monument by court order.And get this: The monument, which consists of over 1,000 crosses adorned with the names of those murdered attempting to escape Communist East Germany for freedom, will be bulldozed on the 4th of July! (See update above, now rescheduled for July 5th because of the pressure we put on!)
Posted by Pete at 06:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Chinese Torture
Here is an example of real torture going on in China. In this case a 13 year old Tibetan nun was the victim:
Ngawang Sangdrol was just 13 when she was first imprisoned by China in Tibet. She was so small her prison guards found it easy to pick her up by the legs and drop her, head first, on to the stone floor of her cell.They beat her with iron rods, placed electric shock batons in her mouth and left her standing in the baking heat until she collapsed of exhaustion. They called her the "ballerina", because when the pain became too much for her, she would stand on the tips of her toes like a dancer. "The more we cried out in pain," she said, "the more they laughed."
And here is a new book about how Mao was more evil than previously thought and how much of the story of the rise of communism in China (the long march etc.) was made up.
This is a nuclear weapon of a book: It devastates the reputation of Mao and most of his henchmen, and raises questions about the legitimacy of the ruling Communist Party. Among the authors' claims:* The famous "Long March," under which the barefoot Communist armies beat a retreat from Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist) armies surrounding them, was inglorious. Chiang let the Red armies go. He needed them as a buffer against warlords in Guizhou and Sichuan and was constrained because Stalin held his son Chiang Ching-kuo as a hostage in Moscow.
* Mao and his leading comrades never actually marched, since they were carried in litters and generally treated "like landlords."
* The renowned battle of the crossing of the Dadu River was a myth. Supposedly the Reds, under KMT machine-gun fire, bravely crossed a bridge that had been set on fire with its planks removed so that they had to pull themselves across using the incandescent chains. A 93-year-old eyewitness said the Red soldiers borrowed doors and coffin lids to replace planks that had been broken, but there was no attack and no deaths at the bridge.
It seems like both Japan and China have a problem with being honest about their histories. Victor David Hanson also has a good column about real torture and what passes for torture among groups like Amnesty International and people like Dick "our soldiers are Nazis" Durbin:
There is also an asymmetry in these slurs. Few mention there really are monsters and mass killers living among us -- the North Koreans who have starved 1 million of their own, Saddam's reign of terror that may have killed as many, and, of course, the Islamicist murderers who behead, blow up and torture. "Mein Kampf" still sells well in some Arab capitals, not in Washington or New York.
So cowards such as officials of the Red Cross and Amnesty International, and, yes, American politicians, prefer to showboat the purported misdemeanors of people who are civilized and will listen to them, rather than to condemn the horrendous felonies of those who are barbaric and will pay them no heed.
Posted by Pete at 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 24, 2005
Its Against The Vibe
Instapundit has a good round up of posts on the Supreme Court's Kelo decision. Stones cry out has a good summary of the actual Kelo decision. Jim Geraghty thinks this is the sort of decision that will lead to violence
This will get reversed, either through constitutional amendment or through another case when the court's ideological makeup has changed. But in the meantime, I think you will see this leading to violence, when people are being involuntarily forced from their homes. It happens even in the best of circumstances when there's a clear public good like a road or a dam... Citizens will resist violently when they're getting forced out for an office park, a parking garage, a Starbucks...
One of Stephen King's first novels called Roadwork was about this sort of violent scenario. This also reminds of the Australia movie The Castle that was based on the legal case in Australia that was extremely similar to the Kelo case just decided. In it a company decides that it is cheaper to kick some people out of their homes than it is to buy some other property so they get the government to invoke eminent domain to seize the homes. The main family in the movie goes to court and their well meaning, but incompetent lawyer argues that should not be forced out because it is against "the vibe" of the Australian constitution. While The Castle has a happier ending then what happened yesterday (the family got to keep their home), the same "vibe" principal applies here. Eminent domain needs to be used as sparingly as possible and only for specific government purposes after the government has first tried to buy the land normally. If this is not the case, then your property rights mean nothing since no matter how hard you work for your property and no matter how well and how long you take care of it some rich or well connected guy can come along and get the government to give it to him. This decision goes against the vibe of our constitution as well and it is sad that the Supreme Court justices did not see that.
One of the scariest parts of this decision is that the supreme court trusts local governments not to abuse the power. Rod Dreher at the corner thinks this is a bad idea since a corrupt government official can easily abuse their authority:
I'll tell you why the Kelo ruling hits especially close to home this week. The other day, FBI agents raided the Dallas City Hall offices of two city council members, as well as the office of a rich and politically well-connected developer who has built lots of housing in their districts. The FBI is being quiet about what they were looking for, but news reports say it's part of a federal investigation into bribery and suchlike. Nobody has been charged -- yet, anyway -- but if the speculation proves out, this stands to be an infuriating example of what businessmen with money can get done when they have corrupt pols in their pocket. I know, I know, this stuff happens every day, all over the place. But the FBI raids on Dallas City Hall have been front page news here all week, and the nefarious potential connection between private and public power and corruption has been on everyone's mind here in Chinatown, I mean Big D.The same is true with other cities like San Antonio which a few years ago had several of its city council men arrested for bribery. Local governments have abused eminent domain before and the Supreme Court has now assured us that they will abuse it again.
Posted by Pete at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Adopt A Chinese Blog
In spite of Microsoft and the Chinese government's attempts to censor the internet, there are still those who want to speak out in favor of freedom in China. This site shows how you can help host a Chinese blogger.
Posted by Pete at 06:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 22, 2005
Nuevo Laredo Police Fired
Neuvo Laredo's mayor is going to fire 150 (out of 724) of the city's police officers because of the recent police vs. police shootout and is going to hire a new police chief because their last one was shot to death hours after starting work. Austin News 8 reports:
Nuevo Laredo's 724 police officers were pulled off patrols last week to be investigated for possible links to organized crime after city police opened fire on a convoy of federal agents sent to bolster security in the area.
I think it may be time to send in Mexico's version of the National Gaurd, but there is always the chance that they are even more corrupt than the local police. All the more reason to secure the border so this violence and corruption will have less of a chance to infect Laredo, Texas.
Posted by Pete at 09:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Multiple Votes and Vote Buying
Sound Politics writes about six people charged with voting multiple times in Washinsgton State. Gateway pundit has updates on the East St Louis vote bribery trial and a West Virgina vote buying investigation that involved Democratic primaries that I had not heard of before. The same West Virginia county where this investigation is going on has more registered voters than residents old enough to vote, but it is not as bad as Milwaukee which had more votes than it does actual people eligible to vote.
Posted by Pete at 09:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 20, 2005
Hitler and Michael Jackson
For some lighter takes on Senator Dick Durbin comparing US troops to Nazis and on the Michael Jackson case here are two videos. The first is of John Stewart who has a montage of people invoking Hitler. The second is of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog interviewing pro Jackson demonstrators and while it is very informative it is also very, very profane.
Posted by Pete at 01:43 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 17, 2005
Sequels
Which movie sequels are better than the originals? Which are about equal?
I think that The Godfather Part I or II, Alien and Aliens, and Star Wars Episode IV and V would all count as movies where the sequels were equally good.
The trend with recent comic book movies seems to be that the sequels are better than the originals. This is the case with Spiderman 2 and X-Men 2 and, although I have not seen it, lots of people seem to think that the same is true with Batman Begins and the earlier Batman movies.
Any thoughts?
Posted by Pete at 05:35 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Twin Politicians
Luckily San Antonio voters recently decided they did not one particular twin to be our mayor. Slightly related to this, Poland may get to be the first country ruled by twins. Chrenkroff writes:
Poland might become the first country in history to be led by identical twins.Even better, Lech (yes, there's that name again) and Jaroslaw Kaczynski are both conservatives, anti-corruption anti-government waste crusaders, and staunch supporters of the US alliance (as well as Poland's involvement in Iraq).
The Kaczynski brothers, who already rarely appear together in public to avoid creating confusion, have the potential to sow utter chaos among the ranks of foreign correspondents and commentators - not to mention photojournalists.
Posted by Pete at 05:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Sahara Part 2
I went to see the movie Sahara earlier this week after finishing the book several weeks ago. I now understand why author Clive Cussler sued over losing control of the script.
The characters are all portrayed fairly close to how they were in the book, but the plot was put in a blender and nicely pureed and then rearranged some more. The book was a story about Dirk Pitt going to search for pollution coming from Mali that will end all life on earth and in the process stumbles upon a story about some mysterious confederate gold lost in the Sahara along with Abe Lincoln. The movie has Dirk Pitt going to look for lost confederate gold (without a kidnapped Lincoln) and then stumbling upon the pollution (which is only a minor subplot in the movie). Many minor details were changed like how the heroes meet the bad guys and how the bad guys meet their ends. Huge subplots like the UN Special Forces rescue teams and the slaves in the secret Mali gold mines were completely left out. Other major details are changed as well with NUMA (the agency Pitt works for) in the book being a federal agency, while in the movie NUMA's director is adamant about how NUMA will never be employed by the government.
The thing is all of these changes made the movie a lot more believable than the book and probably made it work better as a movie. A guy seeking a possible lost treasure is a lot more believable than an evil corporation whose pollution will destroy all life in the world in a matter of months. The movie is also action packed, with the action being on a smaller and more believable scale. This is not to say the action is believable, but it is not totally unbelievable for the most part. There is also a bit of dues ex machina in how they stumble upon the wrecked airplane, partly because the subplot involving why the airplane was there in the first place was left out of the movie. Overall the movie worked as a fun and completely forgettable summer movie and was a good example on how movies sometimes improve on books.
Posted by Pete at 05:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 16, 2005
Do You Know Who Is Starting To Remind Me of Hitler?
Illinois Senator Dick Durbin (PDF file). Of course I realize the difference between a slandering senator and a genocidal dictator and do not really think Durbin=HItler, but it is unclear if Durbin is aware of such distinctions. Hugh Hewitt has more details on the senator who has compared US troops to Nazis and Pol Pot and his attempts to cowardly squirm out of what he said without taking responsibility for his slander.
Posted by Pete at 07:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 15, 2005
More Nueva Laredo
This time the Nueva Laredo police decided to skip the whole needing criminals to shoot police and instead went for the far more efficient method of having police shoot police. From the immigartion blog:
One federal agent was shot and 41 municipal cops were held under military guard Saturday after a shootout between city and federal police.
Posted by Pete at 09:17 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Terrorist Fundraiser Came From Mexico
The Minutemen were not around yet to catch this convicted terrorist supporter. I wonder how many others like him have sneaked across our unsecure border. Here is the AP story:
The government said Kourani paid a Mexican consular official in Beirut $3,000 for a visa to enter Mexico, then sneaked across the U.S.-Mexican border in 2001 and settled in Dearborn, the center of Michigan's Arab-American community of about 300,000.
Posted by Pete at 09:12 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2005
Walking In The Woods
I finished listening to Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods last week. It was almost as good as In a Sunburned Country and had a better narrative. It tells the story of Bryson's attempt to walk the Appalachian trail with one of his old friends. The entire trail is over 2,100 miles long and he gets through about 40% of it over the course of a summer, which is fairly impressive. His history of trail was fairly well done and Bryson's best aside was about the history of botany in America and how it combined with early attempts in exploration. It is especially interesting after his earlier description of England's rather dull plant life in his less interesting book Notes From A Small Island.
I have done similar (though much shorter) hikes before, especially when I was a boy scout. We would do weekend hikes of around 10 miles each way up and down the mountain a few times each year in the San Bernardino mountains in southern California. The sections we tended to hike at were not very beautiful mountains, but they were close and had good trails. The most beautiful mountains I have backpacked in were the Sierra Nevada, although I have done day hikes in the Rockies several times. The only thing close to what Bryson has done that I attempted was Philmont Ranch in New Mexico, which is less of a challenge physically than most of the Appalachian Trail and if I remember correctly we hiked around 100 miles over 10 days. I could relate to Bryson’s exhaustion at carrying a third of his weight on his back for several days in a row. I was surprised his friend lasted as long as he did as he had not done any training before the trip and even for something as relatively easy as Philmont we trained for a couple months beforehand. I was also surprised at how little dangerous wildlife he encountered. He may have seen a bear once (it was night at the time), but aside from a moose and some deer he did not see much in the way of animals. A fellow boy scout a few steps ahead of me almost stepped on a rattlesnake sunning himself on the trail at Philmont and we were only on the trail a few days, yet Bryson stayed away from dangerous animals for weeks at a time. He did almost die in a blizzard though and once a rather dimwitted security gaurd tried to have him arrested so it was not always that safe.
I have only spent a few hours in the Appalachian mountains before while driving through them in Pennsylvania, but could still see how hikers could get lost in the massive wilderness of these forests. My next challenge is to listen to David McCullough’s 21 tape long biography of John Adams.
Posted by Pete at 09:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
9/11 Memorial
If you have not read it yet, here is a Wall Street Journal Column about the attempt to turn the 9/11 memorial into an exhibit that has almost nothing to do with 9/11:
The World Trade Center Memorial Cultural Complex will be an imposing edifice wedged in the place where the Twin Towers once stood. It will serve as the primary "gateway" to the underground area where the names of the lost are chiseled into concrete. The organizers of its principal tenant, the International Freedom Center (IFC), have stated that they intend to take us on "a journey through the history of freedom"--but do not be fooled into thinking that their idea of freedom is the same as that of those Marines. To the IFC's organizers, it is not only history's triumphs that illuminate, but also its failures. The public will have come to see 9/11 but will be given a high-tech, multimedia tutorial about man's inhumanity to man, from Native American genocide to the lynchings and cross-burnings of the Jim Crow South, from the Third Reich's Final Solution to the Soviet gulags and beyond. This is a history all should know and learn, but dispensing it over the ashes of Ground Zero is like creating a Museum of Tolerance over the sunken graves of the USS Arizona.
There is now a website dedicated to taking back the memorial. Jeff Jarvis has had a few good posts on the subject as well: Jarvis wants a celebration of what the towers stood for and using the innocents.
Posted by Pete at 09:36 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
St. Louis Update
Gateway pundit has another roundup of news in the East St. Louis voting fraud trial story. Here is a good quote about the bribery involved:
One undercover tape played for the jury had McIntosh talking to party leader Charles Powell. McIntosh said "Five dollars a vote ain't gonna get it." Powell responded, "I know what you're saying. Give them five dollars...ten dollars a vote."
Posted by Pete at 09:34 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 09, 2005
Nueva Laredo Police Chief Lasts Nine Hours
Nueva Laredo descends even further into anarchy as its brand new police chief is killed after nine hours on the job. NBC News in Dallas reports:
For weeks, no one applied for the Nuevo Laredo police chief job. Many saw it as a death sentence.But Alejandro Dominguez proudly took office on Wednesday, saying he wasn't afraid of anything. Nine hours later, he was ambushed and killed by gunmen who fired some three dozen times.
Dominguez's violent death was the latest blow to Nuevo Laredo, a city across from Laredo, Texas, that has been crippled by a wave of drug violence. The city is on the front line of a turf battle between Mexico's two largest drug gangs, the Gulf and Juarez cartels. Since January, more than 60 people have been killed there, including several city police officers.
Mexico can ever improve itself with this level of corruption and lawlessness. This also shows how important it is to secure our border as soon as possible to keep these sorts of thugs out of the US.
Posted by Pete at 08:08 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Churchill's Ancestors
Remember Ward Churchill, the professor who claims to be part Native American and who used his ethnicity to overcome a lack of serious scholastic ability? It turns out that he is almost for sure not a Native American according to extensive genealogical research performed by rocky mountain news. Normally I would think that doing this sort of research would be distasteful, but in Churchill's case it seems very appropriate because he has based his entire career on his supposed ethnicity. Churchill is not the only white person to claim that they are part Native American when they have no proof of this ancestry and the article linked to above has other similar stories about white guys claiming they were Native Americans.
Posted by Pete at 07:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 08, 2005
I Voted Part 4
My vote of last Thursday was fairly important. Hardberger won by 3,729 votes, with 51% of the vote.
Posted by Pete at 08:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 06, 2005
Washington Governor
A judge in Washington ruled that Washington's governor's race will stand. Even though it looks like there were 1,678 illegally cast votes in a race that was decided by 167 votes, the judge held that because the plaintives could not prove who the illegal votes were cast for the elcetion had to stand. This did not mean the judge agreed with how the elcetion turned out as he thought it was a very poorly run election, but it was up to the voters to fix this. I kind of see how the judge reached his decision even though it is pretty obvious that Gregoire did not get more legal votes than Rossi. When you have voting officials as corrupt and incompetent as those in Washington then it is impossible to know who really won. The catch 22 in this situation is that the judge wants the voters to fix the problem of crooked elections, but the crooked elections prevent the voters from fixing the problem. For more see Michelle Malkin who included this quote:
"It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes!" - Josef Stalin
Sound Politics has more as well with Jim Miller predicting more distributed vote fraud:
And that's the most infuriating thing about distributed vote fraud. That it has changed the results of some elections is certain, but it is almost impossible to prove that it did so in any given election. By disconnecting the people who commit the fraud (mostly individual voters) from those who benefit from it, distributed vote fraud makes it almost risk free to both groups. For that reason, I expect it to increase in future elections, unless we change our laws and our election officials — beginning with King County executive Ron Sims.
Posted by Pete at 08:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I Voted Part 3
San Antonio elects its new mayor on Tuesday. I voted last week against Castro (technically for Hardberger). I am not too thrilled about either candidate, but Castro seems like a bit of a sleazeball to me.
Previous I Voted post.
Posted by Pete at 08:18 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 02, 2005
More North Korea Starvation
The AP reports that North Korea is moving its people from the city to the countryside:
North Korea is sending millions of people from its cities to work on farms each weekend -- another indication that the risk of famine is particularly high this year, a U.N. official said yesterday.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP) is the only aid organization that has a presence outside the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and its officials have reported the movements of the North's people from cities to farms, said Anthea Webb, spokeswoman for the Rome-based agency.
"It's not a new phenomenon, but it certainly caught our folks' attention in terms of the size and the scale," she said. "I suppose also we're so worried about the situation, it's one more sign that things aren't going well."
Captain's Quarters thinks this is a sign of intentional starvation:
According to that description, it appears that the famine has been artificially induced, to an even greater extent than Stalinist agricultural systems naturally produce them. At a point in time where rumors have flown for months about the stability of the Kim regime, such an artifical result has to beg the question: is Kim deliberately touching off a famine?
I have argued before that Communism = Hunger and that North Korea is simply following in the footsteps of Stalin and Mao. While most of Mao's starvation was probably due to gross incompetence, much of the Stalin created famine was an intentional way to oppress his subjects. Kim's starvation is probably a horrid combination of stunning incompetence and intentional cruelty.
Posted by Pete at 10:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
St. Louis Fraud Update
Back in January I linked to a gateway pundit post about voting fraud committed by several Democratic officials in East St. Louis. Gateway pundit has a new post about the federal trial that has resulted from this fraud. The prosecution claims to have tapes of the defendents admitting to paying voters:
He said the defendants, led by Powell, carried out a citywide scheme to pay voters to vote Democratic, including, "Finding alcoholics to take a 10- or 15-minute break and pay them to vote, so they can go back to drinking."At one point, Carr said that defendant Thomas will be heard on a tape stating that, "She had to pay everybody in her district because the people in her district were not for Mr. Kern because Mr. Kern was a racist."
The defendent Kelvin Ellis is also charged with attempted murder for his plan to kill a witness to his voting crimes.
Posted by Pete at 10:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2005
I Am Glad I Already Finished Highschool
California (where I grew up) has one of worst state governments ever. The state legislaturte has now banned textbooks that are over 200 pages long. When I was in high school most of my textbooks were at least 200 pages long and I am pretty sure that everyone of my AP history and science textbooks were that long. My highschool biology textbook was one of the standard college freshmen biology textbooks, but was well over 200 pages long and would thus be banned. My history books had deep and complex informtion and often had to cover several centuries of history dealing with many different countries. In one history class I had two different textbooks each of which was over 200 pages long and I finished reading both of them by the end of the school year. Of course I passed all the AP tests I took and ended up with 30 hours of credit before I had stepped into my first college class, but with the textbooks the Democrats in the state legistlature are requiring students to use many inteligent and hardworking students will be denied the opportunities I had. I suppose one of the biggest issues is why the state legislature is even concerned with the size of textbooks. I am glad that I no longer live under the rulse of California's legislature.
Posted by Pete at 11:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Non!
So the French for whatever reason have rejected the proposed EU constitution with no getting around 55% of the vote. (see earlier related prediction post here) The Dutch quickly followed this with 62% voting no. Hopefully the rulers of Europe will get the message that their people do not want to live under the EU constitution. Unfortunately there is a good chance that many (if not most) of Europe's rulers still do not care what government their people want.
Posted by Pete at 11:02 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack