My university had no journalism school. Thank God - we had enough idiots on campus as it was.
Are journalism students idiots? No?
Do they have no integrity? No?
Why should I believe that? You'd hope that on day 1 they'd learn about "editorializing" as opposed to "reporting", and learn that the former belonged on the editorial page.
Sheesh, I learned this as a scuzzy old allegedly sub-literate engineer - when you described situations, it was to be done in neutral language without advocacy.
Why the rant? This link by Glenn Reynolds, about a "Creation Museum" in Kentucky.
You prefer science to Genesis? Be thankful that this nation founded by Christians permits it. Here you can write biased BS as news, using what ought to be a simple news story about a museum to slam religious believers gratuitously.
Is this about "balance"? Fine. Then start quoting creationists in every science article. It's at least as fair and relevant as quoting detractors about the creation museum.
It certainly isn't about tolerance. It isn't about objectivity.
It's not even journalism.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Toxic Muslims
I happen to know that Muslims pass gas, and when they do it can be unpleasant.
But that's not because they're Muslim, or because they eat anything particularly weird. No, I reached this conclusion based on evidence that Muslims are human beings, and the rest of us do the same thing. Yeah, even you.
And now we hear that 13% of Muslims support suicide bombings under some circumstances. Scary, eh?
Really? Why? There is no context here. Do we have a corresponding figure for non-Muslims? Maybe we do - if so the linked post would have been a good place to present it.
Are there lunatic Muslims? Sure, just read the papers. But again, they're human beings too, and if the same poll were performed on non-Muslims the numbers might not be much different, because there are plenty of wackos to go around among the rest of us too.
So the 13% number is misleading without having a corresponding number for non-Muslims.
Why the title? The situation reminds me of earlier cancer scares that seemed to declare every known industrial chemical carcinogenic. But guess what happened when they started testing so-called "natural" substances too? Uh huh - lots of them are carcinogens too under the right circumstances.
Hat tip to SK, NA, HA, RM, and the many other Muslims I've known who wouldn't hurt a fly.
But that's not because they're Muslim, or because they eat anything particularly weird. No, I reached this conclusion based on evidence that Muslims are human beings, and the rest of us do the same thing. Yeah, even you.
And now we hear that 13% of Muslims support suicide bombings under some circumstances. Scary, eh?
Really? Why? There is no context here. Do we have a corresponding figure for non-Muslims? Maybe we do - if so the linked post would have been a good place to present it.
Are there lunatic Muslims? Sure, just read the papers. But again, they're human beings too, and if the same poll were performed on non-Muslims the numbers might not be much different, because there are plenty of wackos to go around among the rest of us too.
So the 13% number is misleading without having a corresponding number for non-Muslims.
Why the title? The situation reminds me of earlier cancer scares that seemed to declare every known industrial chemical carcinogenic. But guess what happened when they started testing so-called "natural" substances too? Uh huh - lots of them are carcinogens too under the right circumstances.
Hat tip to SK, NA, HA, RM, and the many other Muslims I've known who wouldn't hurt a fly.
Monday, May 21, 2007
You call *that* an erection?
People who love buildings and other objects, right here, courtesy of Boing-Boing
The world's lamest expression
I propose "You always have to have the last word!" Has anyone ever said that without intending to have the last word themselves?
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Nuclear plant trip via Internet?
Alright, I've been away from the nuclear biz for a few years now, but coverage of an event at TVA's Browns Ferry (BFNP) site sounds misleading to me. "Data storm" blamed for shutdown.
First, some background. Look here for information on boiling water reactors (BWR) in general. The players in this event were the reactor recirculation pumps (which tripped) and the condensate demineralizers ("polishers"). The net effect was as if kidney failure caused a seizure, which the doctors in the control room dealt with via manual scram (intentional shutdown of the reactor) from the control room.
Now, the doctors. Historically anyone who operates a reactor or directly supervises them needs a pretty exclusive credential as a "reactor operator" (RO) or "senior reactor operator" (SRO) per requirements from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, occasionally US-NRC). They receive this credential after intensive training on their plants both with books and with team drills using a control room that is a replica of their facility right down to the colors and shapes of the switches, buttons and displays. They can lose it, and of course the jobs that require it, by failing to act as required by training and procedure.
One tenet of reactor management is that shutdowns like this are dissected in detail, particularly automatic ones. For the latter you can bet that the operators on shift at the time will be asked why they didn't avoid the situation if possible, or else shut down the reactor themselves before the automatic logic took over. An unsatisfactory answer will be received as if a doctor at a malpractice trial had said "no, I didn't use anaesthetic because I figured the patient would pass out anyway from the pain".
Now let's talk about the reactor recirculation (RR) pumps. They're not found in pressurized water reactors (PWR), but they're familiar to fossil plant operators. The idea is to increase the coolant flow through the reactor, because that permits it to generate more power (think turbochargers).
There's always some flow under power operation, because steam is flowing out and feedwater is flowing in to maintain a constant level of coolant in the reactor well above the fuel. But if water is recirculated, you can have more flow through the core than what feedwater alone would provide, and this increases power output. And that power varies in proportion to the RR pump speed, so they have variable frequency drives to control their motors (at BFNP, anyway - more modern BWRs control recirc flow in other ways).
When you shut down a plant, the idea is to minimize its power production. Accordingly the RR pumps are shut down early in the process in the course of a planned shutdown of a BWR, and having the RR pumps unavailable for whatever reason (short of large leaks) does not affect reactor safety.
Now, the condensate polishers. They're typically located far from their reactor in the basement of the building which houses the turbine. They clean the reactor coolant, which in a BWR is demineralized water. By the time the water reaches a BWR's condensate polishers it has been through the condensate and feedwater systems, the reactor, the turbine, and the condenser, and along the way it has picked up contaminants from corrosion products and others. This means that you don't hang around the condensate polishers - they're "hot" radiologically.
They have no safety function. David Copperfield could make them all disappear and the plant could be shut down safely. You won't operate the plant that way for long, but nuclear safety regulations are not concerned with that - that's the owner's problem.
Also like kidneys, you have more CPs than you need. In normal operation you'll have as many running as it takes to support full power operation, and the others will either be out of service or being regenerated.
If CPs are the kidneys, the radwaste system is the bladder. CPs that I am familiar with contain tiny beads of special polymeric resins which preferentially absorb various ions, and they don't last forever - they're either regenerated or replaced at intervals. The analogy is left as an exercise.
Either process involves valve manipulations and other activities near the CPs. Automation of this saves radiation exposure to operators and forces use of the proper procedures. And nowadays the cool kids are using programmable logic controllers (PLC) to control such logic - what valve opens when, and for how long, in response to what measurement, etc.
PLCs are like highly proprietary computers with a very narrow focus and specialized I/O devices. They're much more reliable than PCs (thank God for that), and, being proprietary, they need not make compromises in the name of compatibility with other manufacturers. They can be programmed and can communicate like computers in various network topographies. They can drive or be driven by analog signals, switch and relay contacts or by signals sent over their network. They're compact and can be replaced by yanking cards out of a rack. And as a consequence they offer entirely new ways to fail.
I don't know the details of the configuration at BFNP, but it sounds fair to assume that the PLCs that control the CPs somehow share an information network with the reactor recirculation pumps. Otherwise how could the problem with the CPs impact the RR pumps?
Well, if so this interconnection is not quite as crazy as it may sound. For one, all of the systems in the power generation system must work in concert. Once a BWR is generating power, you manipulate control rods to a certain state as dictated by the nuclear engineering staff to optimize fuel consumption. Then you pretty much leave them there, and control power via the speed of the reactor recirc pumps. More power means more flow through the CPs, and they only tolerate so much flow, so whether automated or not the CP status is considered in the operation of the RR pumps.
I understand that BFNP was modified recently, which is probably when the PLCs were put in. These devices were in their infancy at the time these plants were originally designed and built, and BWR units built later still had traditional 4-20mA analog controllers and relay ladder logic for most systems. When the new design was proposed, I'm guessing that some old operators and engineers were saying "WTF? Nothing happens so fast with CPs that we can't deal with it manually and we don't need any strange new control systems with their new failure modes. This isn't some stealth bomber that simply can't be flown without computerized controls and which spends most of its time shut down anyway - what is this crap doing here?" At which time they found that they were troglodytes and were overruled.
But the bottom line is that nothing happened that impacted the public beyond reading about it in the paper. It cost TVA a bundle because shutdowns always do, planned or otherwise, so you can bet that they're looking really hard at preventing recurrences if only for the most venal capitalistic reasons. There'd better be some engineers and instrument techs burning serious midnight oil at the company that provided the PLCs and on the staff at BFNP. And you don't have to be a baseball fan to know that the most effective way to keep your errors down is to have fewer chances - nobody wants this to recur.
So why did we hear of a "data storm"? I don't like that formulation because it invites speculation that somehow the Internet was involved, and in turn, that someone from outside the plant could manipulate the plant to its detriment.
Yeah, fat chance. If I thought that were happening I'd throw a fit myself. No RO or SRO I ever met would stand for that - they're responsible for the plant, they have to know what's going on, and they'd raise Cain if anything that mattered could bypass them. And I can't imagine the NRC liking it.
The TVA spokesperson confirms the separation here:
Original link from Instapundit.
UPDATE: What's this, traffic? It must be a link back from Instapundit. Thanks, Glenn! Incidentally, I made some minor changes above to make it resemble English a bit more closely. I don't have to be literate, I'm an engineer!
First, some background. Look here for information on boiling water reactors (BWR) in general. The players in this event were the reactor recirculation pumps (which tripped) and the condensate demineralizers ("polishers"). The net effect was as if kidney failure caused a seizure, which the doctors in the control room dealt with via manual scram (intentional shutdown of the reactor) from the control room.
Now, the doctors. Historically anyone who operates a reactor or directly supervises them needs a pretty exclusive credential as a "reactor operator" (RO) or "senior reactor operator" (SRO) per requirements from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC, occasionally US-NRC). They receive this credential after intensive training on their plants both with books and with team drills using a control room that is a replica of their facility right down to the colors and shapes of the switches, buttons and displays. They can lose it, and of course the jobs that require it, by failing to act as required by training and procedure.
One tenet of reactor management is that shutdowns like this are dissected in detail, particularly automatic ones. For the latter you can bet that the operators on shift at the time will be asked why they didn't avoid the situation if possible, or else shut down the reactor themselves before the automatic logic took over. An unsatisfactory answer will be received as if a doctor at a malpractice trial had said "no, I didn't use anaesthetic because I figured the patient would pass out anyway from the pain".
Now let's talk about the reactor recirculation (RR) pumps. They're not found in pressurized water reactors (PWR), but they're familiar to fossil plant operators. The idea is to increase the coolant flow through the reactor, because that permits it to generate more power (think turbochargers).
There's always some flow under power operation, because steam is flowing out and feedwater is flowing in to maintain a constant level of coolant in the reactor well above the fuel. But if water is recirculated, you can have more flow through the core than what feedwater alone would provide, and this increases power output. And that power varies in proportion to the RR pump speed, so they have variable frequency drives to control their motors (at BFNP, anyway - more modern BWRs control recirc flow in other ways).
When you shut down a plant, the idea is to minimize its power production. Accordingly the RR pumps are shut down early in the process in the course of a planned shutdown of a BWR, and having the RR pumps unavailable for whatever reason (short of large leaks) does not affect reactor safety.
Now, the condensate polishers. They're typically located far from their reactor in the basement of the building which houses the turbine. They clean the reactor coolant, which in a BWR is demineralized water. By the time the water reaches a BWR's condensate polishers it has been through the condensate and feedwater systems, the reactor, the turbine, and the condenser, and along the way it has picked up contaminants from corrosion products and others. This means that you don't hang around the condensate polishers - they're "hot" radiologically.
They have no safety function. David Copperfield could make them all disappear and the plant could be shut down safely. You won't operate the plant that way for long, but nuclear safety regulations are not concerned with that - that's the owner's problem.
Also like kidneys, you have more CPs than you need. In normal operation you'll have as many running as it takes to support full power operation, and the others will either be out of service or being regenerated.
If CPs are the kidneys, the radwaste system is the bladder. CPs that I am familiar with contain tiny beads of special polymeric resins which preferentially absorb various ions, and they don't last forever - they're either regenerated or replaced at intervals. The analogy is left as an exercise.
Either process involves valve manipulations and other activities near the CPs. Automation of this saves radiation exposure to operators and forces use of the proper procedures. And nowadays the cool kids are using programmable logic controllers (PLC) to control such logic - what valve opens when, and for how long, in response to what measurement, etc.
PLCs are like highly proprietary computers with a very narrow focus and specialized I/O devices. They're much more reliable than PCs (thank God for that), and, being proprietary, they need not make compromises in the name of compatibility with other manufacturers. They can be programmed and can communicate like computers in various network topographies. They can drive or be driven by analog signals, switch and relay contacts or by signals sent over their network. They're compact and can be replaced by yanking cards out of a rack. And as a consequence they offer entirely new ways to fail.
I don't know the details of the configuration at BFNP, but it sounds fair to assume that the PLCs that control the CPs somehow share an information network with the reactor recirculation pumps. Otherwise how could the problem with the CPs impact the RR pumps?
Well, if so this interconnection is not quite as crazy as it may sound. For one, all of the systems in the power generation system must work in concert. Once a BWR is generating power, you manipulate control rods to a certain state as dictated by the nuclear engineering staff to optimize fuel consumption. Then you pretty much leave them there, and control power via the speed of the reactor recirc pumps. More power means more flow through the CPs, and they only tolerate so much flow, so whether automated or not the CP status is considered in the operation of the RR pumps.
I understand that BFNP was modified recently, which is probably when the PLCs were put in. These devices were in their infancy at the time these plants were originally designed and built, and BWR units built later still had traditional 4-20mA analog controllers and relay ladder logic for most systems. When the new design was proposed, I'm guessing that some old operators and engineers were saying "WTF? Nothing happens so fast with CPs that we can't deal with it manually and we don't need any strange new control systems with their new failure modes. This isn't some stealth bomber that simply can't be flown without computerized controls and which spends most of its time shut down anyway - what is this crap doing here?" At which time they found that they were troglodytes and were overruled.
But the bottom line is that nothing happened that impacted the public beyond reading about it in the paper. It cost TVA a bundle because shutdowns always do, planned or otherwise, so you can bet that they're looking really hard at preventing recurrences if only for the most venal capitalistic reasons. There'd better be some engineers and instrument techs burning serious midnight oil at the company that provided the PLCs and on the staff at BFNP. And you don't have to be a baseball fan to know that the most effective way to keep your errors down is to have fewer chances - nobody wants this to recur.
So why did we hear of a "data storm"? I don't like that formulation because it invites speculation that somehow the Internet was involved, and in turn, that someone from outside the plant could manipulate the plant to its detriment.
Yeah, fat chance. If I thought that were happening I'd throw a fit myself. No RO or SRO I ever met would stand for that - they're responsible for the plant, they have to know what's going on, and they'd raise Cain if anything that mattered could bypass them. And I can't imagine the NRC liking it.
The TVA spokesperson confirms the separation here:
"The integrated control system (ICS) network is not connected to the network outside the plant, but it is connected to a very large number of controllers and devices in the plant," Johnson said. "You can end up with a lot of information, and it appears to be more than it could handle."
That's not to say that no computers are ever attached to such control systems. Some are used to monitor and log various plant statuses to help in diagnosing problems and analyzing trips, and they are invaluable for this. But in my experience they are connected through isolators such that they could fail completely, short out, etc, without harming the original circuits. They don't control anything related to power production, and no safety related plant functionality is lost if such systems are unavailable. Original link from Instapundit.
UPDATE: What's this, traffic? It must be a link back from Instapundit. Thanks, Glenn! Incidentally, I made some minor changes above to make it resemble English a bit more closely. I don't have to be literate, I'm an engineer!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Would they have asked Bill Clinton this?
Heavens, a Mormon is running for President! Lock up your daughters!
Although I haven't picked anyone else either, I'm not a Mitt Romney backer. And I've never lived among significant groups of Mormons. But the ones I have known have been good people, and I know BS when I hear it.
By now everyone has heard of Al Sharpton's latest asininity, about Mormons, but the corker has to be the SOB who asked Romney if he had slept with his wife before they got married.
Ah yes, nothing could be more significant in a politician than whether they're HYPOCRITES! And why not? It plays into the MSM's biases - non-lefties have higher standards, so they're more likely to fall short of them. Far better to elect the kinds of whorehopping degenerates you're likely to find as, say, senators from Massachusetts.
I'd like to flip this logic on its head. Let's ask the candidates "Are you a hypocrite? And if not, doesn't that mean that you have no meaningful standards at all for your conduct?"
As for Romney, what should he have said? Where are David Letterman's Top Ten List writers? I'm no Scrappleface, and I'm sure I won't come up with 10, but here goes:
"Why don't you save that question for the debates?"
"It depends on what the meaning of 'have sex' is"
"I was before it before I was against it"
"Yes, but I'm not a Democrat - I wouldn't pull out until the job was done"
"As many times as you have with your mother" (risky in more ways than one)
"I'm no Jack Kennedy"
Although I haven't picked anyone else either, I'm not a Mitt Romney backer. And I've never lived among significant groups of Mormons. But the ones I have known have been good people, and I know BS when I hear it.
By now everyone has heard of Al Sharpton's latest asininity, about Mormons, but the corker has to be the SOB who asked Romney if he had slept with his wife before they got married.
Ah yes, nothing could be more significant in a politician than whether they're HYPOCRITES! And why not? It plays into the MSM's biases - non-lefties have higher standards, so they're more likely to fall short of them. Far better to elect the kinds of whorehopping degenerates you're likely to find as, say, senators from Massachusetts.
I'd like to flip this logic on its head. Let's ask the candidates "Are you a hypocrite? And if not, doesn't that mean that you have no meaningful standards at all for your conduct?"
As for Romney, what should he have said? Where are David Letterman's Top Ten List writers? I'm no Scrappleface, and I'm sure I won't come up with 10, but here goes:
"Why don't you save that question for the debates?"
"It depends on what the meaning of 'have sex' is"
"I was before it before I was against it"
"Yes, but I'm not a Democrat - I wouldn't pull out until the job was done"
"As many times as you have with your mother" (risky in more ways than one)
"I'm no Jack Kennedy"
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Mickey Mouse competition
"Dancing with the Stars" just ended with a touch of justice - we're finally free of this year's winner of the Master P award, Billy Ray Cyrus. I can't see how anyone besides a Howard Stern fan could have ever voted for him based on his dancing skills. Heather Mills outperformed him for sure, but she was voted off two weeks ago. After Billy Ray who can they follow up with - Larry Flynt?
Oh no, not on ABC. We couldn't have a smut peddler on Disney's network.
Yes, Disney owns ABC. Disney also happens to purvey "Hannah Montana", a show starring....Billy Ray Cyrus! Who also records music on the Disney label. Somehow no one saw fit to acknowledge that, and this week host Tom Bergeron even prompted Billy Ray to mention his album.
Hmm, am I suggesting anything? Not yet. But I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest to find that the show had a production meeting every Tuesday morning with the producers, suits and the judges. There, like the producers of professional wrestling, they would decide what is to happen next in order to get and sustain high ratings. If they can work what amounts to a big commercial into what is nominally the entertainment part of the broadcast so much the better. How else to explain Billy Ray's scores from the *judges*?
Not convinced? How about that huge sloppy wet kiss they gave in the form of a retrospective of his time on the show? Yeah, he's "entertaining" to some, but then so is professional wrestling.
Of course the voters haven't distinguished themselves either, and I shudder at the thought that they might be using similar criteria to vote in *political* elections. Good grief, Joey Fatone finished next to last behind Ian Ziering?
Oh sure, it's cool to some to rip on Joey's former band, NSync, and Joey has probably rubbed some fans the wrong way. But if you want to watch Ian Ziering, I'm sure his old show is in reruns somewhere (and Billy Ray's show is in production still). If you don't like good dancing, fine - don't watch the show. Or at least don't vote, so the rest of us can see the better dancers.
Yeah, I'll keep watching. Likewise, sometimes I don't turn the channel when pro wrestling comes on. It doesn't have to be a competently judged contest or even honest competition to be entertaining.
Oh no, not on ABC. We couldn't have a smut peddler on Disney's network.
Yes, Disney owns ABC. Disney also happens to purvey "Hannah Montana", a show starring....Billy Ray Cyrus! Who also records music on the Disney label. Somehow no one saw fit to acknowledge that, and this week host Tom Bergeron even prompted Billy Ray to mention his album.
Hmm, am I suggesting anything? Not yet. But I wouldn't be shocked in the slightest to find that the show had a production meeting every Tuesday morning with the producers, suits and the judges. There, like the producers of professional wrestling, they would decide what is to happen next in order to get and sustain high ratings. If they can work what amounts to a big commercial into what is nominally the entertainment part of the broadcast so much the better. How else to explain Billy Ray's scores from the *judges*?
Not convinced? How about that huge sloppy wet kiss they gave in the form of a retrospective of his time on the show? Yeah, he's "entertaining" to some, but then so is professional wrestling.
Of course the voters haven't distinguished themselves either, and I shudder at the thought that they might be using similar criteria to vote in *political* elections. Good grief, Joey Fatone finished next to last behind Ian Ziering?
Oh sure, it's cool to some to rip on Joey's former band, NSync, and Joey has probably rubbed some fans the wrong way. But if you want to watch Ian Ziering, I'm sure his old show is in reruns somewhere (and Billy Ray's show is in production still). If you don't like good dancing, fine - don't watch the show. Or at least don't vote, so the rest of us can see the better dancers.
Yeah, I'll keep watching. Likewise, sometimes I don't turn the channel when pro wrestling comes on. It doesn't have to be a competently judged contest or even honest competition to be entertaining.
Weaving gold into straw
Sometimes people don't appreciate how management can foul things up. Being here in Chicago, I use the 1990s Bulls as an example. Suppose Phil Jackson had benched Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and played BJ Armstrong at center and Ed Nealy at point guard. Would the Bulls have won 6 championships in 8 years that way?
Or perhaps Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense ought to be pulling a plow?
Now I have a journalism example too. It appears that incredibly gifted columnist/blogger/father James Lileks will now be a reporter.
Or perhaps Kentucky Derby winner Street Sense ought to be pulling a plow?
Now I have a journalism example too. It appears that incredibly gifted columnist/blogger/father James Lileks will now be a reporter.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Associated partisans
Greensburg, KS was obliterated by a super strong tornado a few days ago. And what did the Associated Press want to write about?
If the Red Cross or other private groups had programs for relief they went unmentioned. But we did read this:
In Kansas, the governor said the state's response was limited by the shifting of emergency equipment, such as tents, trucks and semitrailers, to the war in Iraq.
"Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild," she said.
Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office, which manages state resources during emergencies, said the state has a shortage of heavy equipment transport trailers, pallet-sized loading systems, Humvees, dump trucks and other large equipment that would be help move massive amount of debris.
"We are never at 100 percent because we are allocated a certain amount from the National Guard Bureau. With the war, we are much shorter than we would be. We have about 40 percent of what is allocated," Watson said.
And they say that *blogs* don't have editors. Is it news when a Democrat administration (funny how that detail was omitted) taking a cheap shot at the war in Iraq? If this is what passes for news reporting, why not add something like "Democrat leaders lost no time in politicizing yet another natural disaster in hopes of wringing advantage from the blood of the victims.""Not having the National Guard equipment, which used to be positioned in various parts of the state, to bring in immediately is really going to handicap this effort to rebuild," she said.
Sharon Watson, a spokeswoman for the adjutant general's office, which manages state resources during emergencies, said the state has a shortage of heavy equipment transport trailers, pallet-sized loading systems, Humvees, dump trucks and other large equipment that would be help move massive amount of debris.
"We are never at 100 percent because we are allocated a certain amount from the National Guard Bureau. With the war, we are much shorter than we would be. We have about 40 percent of what is allocated," Watson said.
If the Red Cross or other private groups had programs for relief they went unmentioned. But we did read this:
City Administrator Steve Hewitt said his job Monday would be to get city government working again. He said he needed to find employees, get purchase orders out, pay employees and bills _ in short, create commerce again in Greensburg.
"Get government going _ that is our No. 1 priority," Hewitt said.
I would expect that someone who made a living from the govt would say that. But "create commerce again"? Sheesh, is the govt the only thing going in Greensburg? And does it belong in the article?
"Get government going _ that is our No. 1 priority," Hewitt said.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Pro choice
The sex educators had some fun a couple of weeks ago at Jane Galt's. They decided that kids have to have it in our public schools, and that's all there is to it. The comments have been closed and this is too longwinded anyway, so here is my no doubt long-awaited take.
Sex education? Sure, there are plenty of things every human being ought to know about it. But perhaps the main one is simply discipline, whether you're talking keeping your hands off the interns, having sex in church, masturbating in a theater, soliciting gay sex in a public bathroom, a quickie in a car parked on the street or plenty of other things that can be and have been done with people who presumably know more than enough to avoid disease and unwanted pregnancy. Teaching restraint and manners is a lifetime job, and liberals throw a fit any time a public school tries to teach anything that smacks of an ideology other than their own secular religion that dares not speak its name. Yet even the liberals worship condoms, the use of which (or alternatives) requires discipline in itself and fails regularly enough even when used as directed.
And what of consequences of their actions? About the severest consequences modern kids ever suffer in daily life are perhaps losses at video games. Not everything can be reset and restarted, yet we have people trying to eliminate winning and losing from kids' lives lest they suffer a blow to their self-esteem. Yeah, far better than they should learn of consequences from maternity wards, abortion mills, public health clinics or cops. If we want kids to be responsible about sex, maybe we should teach them to be responsible, period. You can't expect it to be taught in schools, especially to kids who don't even have to do chores or earn money.
You also can't teach anybody much of anything practical in sex education. Well, besides unrolling condoms on bananas. That's not very practical unless they're holding the banana below the waist while they're hornier than goats with three testicles and the banana is subject to going bad any instant. And with young guys that might even be enough to end the show (for a couple of minutes, anyway).
When I was a kid there was no sex education in the public schools I attended, but there wasn't a force in the universe that could have stopped me from finding out everything I could on the subject. But knowing how and why sperm are discharged into a vagina didn't help me achieve same, or to get further opportunities if I ever succeeded.
Now what are schools for, anyway? They're publicly funded because we're interested in producing good citizens. Social engineering for sure, but it's intended to complement the parents, not displace them. They don't and shouldn't have the kids 24/7, so they can't teach the kinds of things that require 24/7 teaching (they can only counter them). And the things that require 24/7 teaching would be pretty much anything but the 3 Rs, history, science, vocational education and maybe PE.
What's more, why have the schools teach kids things that they're sure to pick up on their own if they're interested? IMO sex education falls in that category. Likewise with art and music - let the kids stay after school for that if they want it, or leave it as an elective for kids with acceptable achievement in the core subjects.
One of the best things people should be taught is to get the fundamentals right. Apparently liberal school reformers didn't get the news - like all liberals, they'd rather have govt institutions do dozens of things poorly than a few things right. So we clutter schools with irrelevant nonsense at the expense of fundamentals, like a would-be basketball player who can't dribble, pass or shoot but spends his time practicing slam-dunks.
Hey, if you want your kids to get sex education, teach them yourself. If you're not qualified, just how did you have kids, anyway? If you didn't know what caused them then, surely you've learned something since, right?
(Well alright, maybe you adopted the kid(s). Fine. Remind them that even though their mother didn't keep them, she didn't kill them, and maybe they ought to think about that if they ever contemplate an abortion.)
Face it, there simply aren't any good defensible reasons for requiring sex education in schools. There are some bad ones though. Like this. Even if we must require sex ed in the schools, there's no place for that - it's about promoting particular lifestyles, not any sort of essential knowledge.
Hey, I'm just being "pro-choice"...
Sex education? Sure, there are plenty of things every human being ought to know about it. But perhaps the main one is simply discipline, whether you're talking keeping your hands off the interns
And what of consequences of their actions? About the severest consequences modern kids ever suffer in daily life are perhaps losses at video games. Not everything can be reset and restarted, yet we have people trying to eliminate winning and losing from kids' lives lest they suffer a blow to their self-esteem. Yeah, far better than they should learn of consequences from maternity wards, abortion mills, public health clinics or cops. If we want kids to be responsible about sex, maybe we should teach them to be responsible, period. You can't expect it to be taught in schools, especially to kids who don't even have to do chores or earn money.
You also can't teach anybody much of anything practical in sex education. Well, besides unrolling condoms on bananas. That's not very practical unless they're holding the banana below the waist while they're hornier than goats with three testicles and the banana is subject to going bad any instant. And with young guys that might even be enough to end the show (for a couple of minutes, anyway).
When I was a kid there was no sex education in the public schools I attended, but there wasn't a force in the universe that could have stopped me from finding out everything I could on the subject. But knowing how and why sperm are discharged into a vagina didn't help me achieve same, or to get further opportunities if I ever succeeded.
Now what are schools for, anyway? They're publicly funded because we're interested in producing good citizens. Social engineering for sure, but it's intended to complement the parents, not displace them. They don't and shouldn't have the kids 24/7, so they can't teach the kinds of things that require 24/7 teaching (they can only counter them). And the things that require 24/7 teaching would be pretty much anything but the 3 Rs, history, science, vocational education and maybe PE.
What's more, why have the schools teach kids things that they're sure to pick up on their own if they're interested? IMO sex education falls in that category. Likewise with art and music - let the kids stay after school for that if they want it, or leave it as an elective for kids with acceptable achievement in the core subjects.
One of the best things people should be taught is to get the fundamentals right. Apparently liberal school reformers didn't get the news - like all liberals, they'd rather have govt institutions do dozens of things poorly than a few things right. So we clutter schools with irrelevant nonsense at the expense of fundamentals, like a would-be basketball player who can't dribble, pass or shoot but spends his time practicing slam-dunks.
Hey, if you want your kids to get sex education, teach them yourself. If you're not qualified, just how did you have kids, anyway? If you didn't know what caused them then, surely you've learned something since, right?
(Well alright, maybe you adopted the kid(s). Fine. Remind them that even though their mother didn't keep them, she didn't kill them, and maybe they ought to think about that if they ever contemplate an abortion.)
Face it, there simply aren't any good defensible reasons for requiring sex education in schools. There are some bad ones though. Like this. Even if we must require sex ed in the schools, there's no place for that - it's about promoting particular lifestyles, not any sort of essential knowledge.
Hey, I'm just being "pro-choice"...
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Short memories
Read something like this and it's easy to imagine the fall of civilization. Well, yeah, this was worse, but how anyone can vote for Democrats after what we've seen so far is amazing. Stay home, vote 3rd party, *something*, but don't vote for those creeps.
And has everyone forgotten how miserable everything got when the Dems ran the show with numbers that could defeat filibusters and we had that insufferable sanctimonious wuss Jimmy Carter in the White House? They fouled things up so badly that we elected Ronald Reagan. We hear plenty of moaning about current circumstances, but the numbers from the Carter years show that this is nothing but partisan yammering. If you want it back, all you have to do is vote Dem.
Voting for and even declaring failure in the Middle East? Nothing the Republicans have done even compares to this Dem disgrace. And here in IL Gov. Blagojevich is grasping for huge programs like a madman while he can - the last couple of Dem governors of IL have wound up in prison upon leaving office, and he's under serious investigation.
Yet lack of enthusiasm for voting for Republicans is understandable. They never had large margins of control, they had the press fighting back tooth and nail, and many of their numbers were RINOS anyway, but still they didn't deliver what people wanted from them. So if govt is to be about nothing but wealth transfers and impotent posturing after all, we might as well vote for the Dems.
But when people like some of my relatives, who have a history of voting Democrat, start cussing the Dems, something's going on.
And has everyone forgotten how miserable everything got when the Dems ran the show with numbers that could defeat filibusters and we had that insufferable sanctimonious wuss Jimmy Carter in the White House? They fouled things up so badly that we elected Ronald Reagan. We hear plenty of moaning about current circumstances, but the numbers from the Carter years show that this is nothing but partisan yammering. If you want it back, all you have to do is vote Dem.
Voting for and even declaring failure in the Middle East? Nothing the Republicans have done even compares to this Dem disgrace. And here in IL Gov. Blagojevich is grasping for huge programs like a madman while he can - the last couple of Dem governors of IL have wound up in prison upon leaving office, and he's under serious investigation.
Yet lack of enthusiasm for voting for Republicans is understandable. They never had large margins of control, they had the press fighting back tooth and nail, and many of their numbers were RINOS anyway, but still they didn't deliver what people wanted from them. So if govt is to be about nothing but wealth transfers and impotent posturing after all, we might as well vote for the Dems.
But when people like some of my relatives, who have a history of voting Democrat, start cussing the Dems, something's going on.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Membership of the Congresses of the United States
Greg Hlatky has done a lot of dogged work putting together this page - check it out.
In which I too mock Sheryl Crow
Sheryl Crow has definitely soaked up too much sun. If you read the news or any blogs yesterday you've heard of her policy prescription for saving the planet. Yep, just one square of TP per trip, folks. What with her hippie predilections we should be happy she uses any at all. And I can't wait to hear her address feminine hygiene.
I wonder if Rosie O'Donnell will be following along? Eww, that one square ain't gonna do it. She'll need to use the roofer's definition of a square - 100 square feet. Whether that will be sufficient remains to be seen - paparazzi, do your stuff!
Now just to show how classy and restrained this blog is, not that *I* didn't write anything like some of the blog comments I saw in various places. For instance, it's been suggested that the departure of Lance Armstrong was related to, um, paperwork. Stuff like that has no place on this blog so I'd never write it here. And certain words don't appear in this blog either, so I didn't title this post "saving the planet the asshole way". Nosirree, we have standards here.
And then there was the account of her and Laurie David running into Karl Rove. Sheryl Crow seems to have battered him with her finger. He took action to avoid this, and Laurie "I'm not perfect" David marveled that anyone would refuse to be jabbed in the chest by Sheryl Crow. Now we know.
(And again, this blog has standards - I would never propose that we challenge blindfolded people to poke Karl Rove and Sheryl Crow in the chest and try to tell them apart. That's *class*.)
I agree with Freedom Eden. We all have our own particular needs of course, so we can make offsetting sacrifices in other areas. Like, say, forgoing the use of private jets.
Seriously, I shudder to think of people like this running the govt.
I wonder if Rosie O'Donnell will be following along? Eww, that one square ain't gonna do it. She'll need to use the roofer's definition of a square - 100 square feet. Whether that will be sufficient remains to be seen - paparazzi, do your stuff!
Now just to show how classy and restrained this blog is, not that *I* didn't write anything like some of the blog comments I saw in various places. For instance, it's been suggested that the departure of Lance Armstrong was related to, um, paperwork. Stuff like that has no place on this blog so I'd never write it here. And certain words don't appear in this blog either, so I didn't title this post "saving the planet the asshole way". Nosirree, we have standards here.
And then there was the account of her and Laurie David running into Karl Rove. Sheryl Crow seems to have battered him with her finger. He took action to avoid this, and Laurie "I'm not perfect" David marveled that anyone would refuse to be jabbed in the chest by Sheryl Crow. Now we know.
(And again, this blog has standards - I would never propose that we challenge blindfolded people to poke Karl Rove and Sheryl Crow in the chest and try to tell them apart. That's *class*.)
I agree with Freedom Eden. We all have our own particular needs of course, so we can make offsetting sacrifices in other areas. Like, say, forgoing the use of private jets.
Seriously, I shudder to think of people like this running the govt.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
More overreaction to VT massacre
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin, it's a bit overstated IMO. At least, I'll trade a little liberty for a lot of safety, but even then only temporarily. Examples might be, say, quarantines.
But with quarantines we have a disease we can diagnose. If only we were so good at diagnosing mental illness. (At least the press isn't very good, anyway) Yet we're hearing rumblings about simplifying involuntary institutionalization in response to the Virginia Tech slaughter, and that's potentially very scary.
For instance, it's often very tempting to attribute disagreement to mental defects, especially in politics. In some countries it has been policy, and dissidents would wind up in mental hospitals or "reeducation" facilities.
But it can't happen here, right? In fact, it has, and the mere threat of institutionalization has been used for intimidation, Here's an example.
Now that we've seen Congress change hands twice in the last 15 years, you'd hope that both major parties would have learned something important: you don't ever let the govt have a power that you wouldn't trust your opponents with. No more political theater of Congressional investigators and special prosecutors - the Dems could just declare President Bush, VP Cheney, Tom Delay and countless others mentally ill instead harassing them, and the rest of us would cage Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, Al Gore and other spigots of senselessness.
IMO any safeguards against political or other misuse that were strong enough to be worthwhile would render the whole project useless. But I suppose I could compromise a little. So I propose the Brazen Bull Act of 2007 - Let's find the people who are in favor of simplified institutionalization and lock them up.
But with quarantines we have a disease we can diagnose. If only we were so good at diagnosing mental illness. (At least the press isn't very good, anyway) Yet we're hearing rumblings about simplifying involuntary institutionalization in response to the Virginia Tech slaughter, and that's potentially very scary.
For instance, it's often very tempting to attribute disagreement to mental defects, especially in politics. In some countries it has been policy, and dissidents would wind up in mental hospitals or "reeducation" facilities.
But it can't happen here, right? In fact, it has, and the mere threat of institutionalization has been used for intimidation, Here's an example.
Now that we've seen Congress change hands twice in the last 15 years, you'd hope that both major parties would have learned something important: you don't ever let the govt have a power that you wouldn't trust your opponents with. No more political theater of Congressional investigators and special prosecutors - the Dems could just declare President Bush, VP Cheney, Tom Delay and countless others mentally ill instead harassing them, and the rest of us would cage Dennis Kucinich, Michael Moore, Al Gore and other spigots of senselessness.
IMO any safeguards against political or other misuse that were strong enough to be worthwhile would render the whole project useless. But I suppose I could compromise a little. So I propose the Brazen Bull Act of 2007 - Let's find the people who are in favor of simplified institutionalization and lock them up.
Who is Sick?
Who is Sick? has incredible potential. Just check it out.
Then try to imagine how much this free product would have cost if the govt had tried to implement it.
Thanks to Glenn Reynolds (who I only credit about 10% of the time, as if he'd notice the difference on his hit counter) and Boing-Boing for the links.
Then try to imagine how much this free product would have cost if the govt had tried to implement it.
Thanks to Glenn Reynolds (who I only credit about 10% of the time, as if he'd notice the difference on his hit counter) and Boing-Boing for the links.
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