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Re: iDocile by Christopher Check

Apologies to my colleagues for my being slightly contrarian with my first contribution.  I altogether agree with Aaron that a good busstop brawl is better for schoolboys than texting, tweeting, and doubtless things much worse.  Nonetheless, I much prefer Aaron’s original phrase, which, let the record show, he coined, “eSlavery”, to iDocile.  Docility is a good, indeed it is a virtue (willingness/ability to be taught; from the same root as “doctrine”) in short supply these days, perhaps especially among schoolchildren.  St. Thomas says that the enemies of docility are indolence and pride.  The whole paraphernalia and systems of modern communication technology, from iPhones to Facebook, seem to me to cultivate these two vices especially well.

Re: IDocile by Thomas Fleming

On the other hand, Aaron, maybe some people need an iPhone with a Twitter account.  In Florida, a white female in the McDonald’s drive-thru made the mistake of saying something like, “Not cool,” when a black woman dumped out her trash.  The would-be Miss Manners was brutally assaulted and called a “white b-tch” and had grape soda flung at her.  The assailants are described as two black females and a black male driving a Cadillac.  If there were any justice in this racist society, the three would have been given, gratis, iPhones and Twitter accounts that might have kept them tranquil.

iDocile by Aaron D. Wolf

On my way to TRI Towers from my country estate this morning, I took a different route into the city. I started noticing something different in my peripheral vision, so I began looking more intently. Street corner after street corner had teenagers in ratty shorts and T-shirts waiting for a Rockford school bus. That was nothing different from what I remember from living in town.

The difference? Almost every one of them, block after block, was staring downward at a tiny box, face blank, thumbs jabbing at little buttons.

What I remember from just a few years before is that, on nearly every corner, at least two of them would’ve been shoving, fighting, yelling at each other.  Not so any more.  And the thing is, this change isn’t actually for the better.

Cheer, Cheer for Old Notre Dame by Tom Piatak

Just three days after Georgetown University had Kathleen Sebelius on campus to address an awards ceremony during commencement week, another prominent Catholic university found a better way of dealing with Sebelius:  the University of Notre Dame filed suit against Sebelius in federal court, asking the court to enjoin and then vacate the Obama Administration’s mandate requiring employers, including Catholic universities, hospitals, and charities, to provide insurance for contraceptives, including contraceptives that act as abortifacients.  In the complaint, Notre Dame included one count alleging a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, four counts alleging violations of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, one count alleging a violation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, and three counts alleging violations of the Adminstrative Procedure Act.  42 other Catholic institutions filed similar lawsuits across the country.  (Georgetown was not one of them).

The Notre Dame lawsuit will likely draw more attention than the other lawsuits, because in 2009 Notre Dame honored President Obama by inviting him to be its commencement speaker and awarding him an honorary degree, despite Obama’s long and vocal support for abortion.  In his speech, Obama promised to look for common ground with those who disagreed with him over abortion.  Three years later, Notre Dame’s lawsuit is proof of how valuable Obama’s commitment to seeking common ground turned out to be.  Now all that remains is for Notre Dame to rescind the honorary degree Obama should never have been given, preferably in a major ceremony at halftime during the home football game on the Saturday closest to the election.

UPDATE:  Since writing this, I’ve read two pieces on the issue I’d like to recommend, one by Scott Richert on the substantive issue and one by Ross Douthat on the politics.  Scott’s piece may be found here and Douthat’s piece may be found here.

Education Nightmares Revisited by Aaron D. Wolf

With the threat of a second, unfettered term for President BHO looming, one begins to wonder what sort of legacy he would try to cobble together.  Well, smack in the middle of that second term would be the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.  A drumbeat from the left has been growing over the last year or so, pounding once again for education reform that would close the “achievement gap,” and Obama has done little, other than criticizing 43′s No Child Left Behind.

That can mean only one thing: a massive federal push for desegregation and busing.  Right on cue, professional mischief-maker David L. Kirp enters, stage left, in the NYT Sunday Review:

The failure of the No Child Left Behind regimen to narrow the achievement gap offers the sobering lesson that closing underperforming public schools, setting high expectations for students, getting tough with teachers and opening a raft of charter schools isn’t the answer. If we’re serious about improving educational opportunities, we need to revisit the abandoned policy of school integration.

The piece is a real blast from the past, marshaling all sorts of refried arguments, but seasoned with new data that show, among other things, “black youths who spent five years in desegregated schools have earned 25 percent more than those who never had that opportunity. Now in their 30s and 40s, they’re also healthier—the equivalent of being seven years younger.”

Kirp’s bottom line: Poor black kids who are forced to be in the same room with rich white kids will be smarter, wealthier, and healthier!  You will struggle to find political correctness that is more racist than this.

Lost in the shuffle once again are middle-class kids, about whose education our federal overlords could not give a flip.  Whether it’s Romney or Obama, those kids will continue to learn tolerance instead of math.  Neither the liberal arts that undergird civilization nor the vocational training that bolsters a strong manufacturing base is on the radar, let alone a priority.  So get ready, America, to look more and more like Rockford, Illinois, where unemployment is staggering and the largest employer is the public school district.  That’s what a decade of federally mandated desegregation bought us.

Re: Facebook by Thomas Fleming

Scott, yes, I anticipated the flop for exactly the same reason.  What appears not to bother anyone is the obvious fact that Zuckerberg and his friends have flimflammed a lot of people.  It seems to me that one of the more obvious ways in which the new Facebook world is significant is that it allows clever people to fleece more and more people of more than their money.  A fool and his money are soon parted is truer today than at any time in human history.

Re: It’s All Over/Facebook IPO by Scott P. Richert

Tom, the Facebook IPO went about how I predicted it would. I’d been trying to figure out how to short Facebook out of the gate, because it simply seemed obvious that Facebook’s business model cannot, in the long run, support even the $38 opening price (and perhaps not even in the short run). Zuckerberg and his cronies made fantastic fortunes on Friday, but many of the small investors who bought in have already lost money.

Facebook makes its money the way Google does: through advertising. Google talks about its various properties as “products,” but they’re simply vehicles for delivering advertising to consumers. Or, rather, they’re vehicles for delivering its real products—consumers—to its real customers—the advertisers.

Facebook makes roughly $4 per year per account holder in advertising revenue. With 901 million active users as of April, that’s a pretty penny. But in order to justify the $38 opening price (much less anything higher), Facebook needs to bring in quite a bit more. Just as Google ads have become more obtrusive since its IPO, look for Facebook ads—so far, largely a model of restraint—to become more obnoxious.

Historians of the digital age—assuming anyone bothers to chronicle the digital age—will look back at Facebook’s IPO as the day the Facebook fantasy died.

Re: It’s All Over by Thomas Fleming

Try not to be so negative, Clyde, and look on  the bright side.  Increased diversity enriches our lives.  If you want really authentic Chinese food, go to Bangkok, where a Chinese from Taiwan was arrested for his exotic taste in food and religion.  He had roasted six unborn babies and covered them with gold leaf–the mark of a true gourmet in the East.  Police say the intended cannibalism was part of  a black magic ritual, but this is far from being the first case of human dim sum.

There must be a way of making money of of this.  Now that the Facebook offering is falling on its face–as I had hoped–perhaps Mr. Zuckerberg (or Mr. Gates or Mr. Dimon) can turn his talents to a new capital venture.  One of these tycoons could  kill  kill two birds with one stone, by giving employment to women on welfare while creating a new fast-food industry.  In the unlikely event that one of them  has a conscience to salve, he could always donate some of the profits to Planned Parenthood.  Opportunity, it’s what America is all about.

Where is Walter Block when you need him?

It’s All Over by Clyde N. Wilson

Yesterday was not a good day. I got the word about the new birth ratio and realised that the local Chinese restaurants are now advertising in Spanish.

Re: Georgetown by Thomas Fleming

Tom, I heard on the radio some of the greeting Sebelius received–a gratifying round of jeers, boos, and anti-abortion outbursts.  Ordinarily, I am in favor of maintaining respectful silence on these occasions, but when an advocate for homicide is invited to a Catholic school, the students have some obligation–within limits of course–to make their disapproval known.  This is not a case of merely intellectual or political differences but involves quite literally  cases of life and death.  I would strongly oppose disrupting a pro-infanticide rally, but Sebelius had the bad taste to go to a nominally Catholic school.  She deserved what she got.

PS Our radio show comes on at 3 pm CDT.  Tom called last week and I am hoping that some of you will do the same.