Right Wing Nation

for entrepeneurship (hat tip The Anchoress).

It was obvious long ago that there was an education problem in the public school system; when more and more of your students each semester don’t know that =C2*D2 is identical to =D2*C2, or don’t understand the basic order of precedence (and therefore leave out parentheses), it’s hard to miss.

It wasn’t until later, however, that I realized that there was at least as much of a barking moonbat problem in the public schools as there is at the universities.

No, it wasn’t Miss Goth Witch, though she did howl at the moon. She was a sophomore, so she’d had a year to be infected with the LLS (Loony Leftist Syndrome).

It was the beginning of the semester, and we were talking about distributions. My aha! experience went something like this:

“Why do you call it a normal distribution? That’s a value judgment.”

I’m rarely speechless, but I was then. What do you say to something that breathtakingly stupid? But then, another student chimed in:

“You’re saying some distributions are more normal than others, and that’s offensive.”

And as if that weren’t enough, a third student said:

“I agree. Can we call it something else?”

These were freshmen, and it was the fall semester. Had they just taken freshman comp or some wackjob “disadvantaged studies” class, that would have explained where they picked up this stupidity. But these kids were right out of high school, less than three months out of high school. (The good news is that most of the other students were at least curling their lips, if not out and out snickering.)

I’m afraid I was rather unyielding. No, it’s not a value judgment, and no, we can’t call it something else, because it’s a normal distribution, period, the end, that’s all folks, moving right along. The three students weren’t happy that I hadn’t caved to their PC braindeath, but they got over it.

That same, first student also objected to “deviation” in “standard deviation,” and for the same reason (though nobody seemed to mind “standard”). She also objected to “error” (as in “standard error”), and said “it’s just different, not in error.”

Freshmen. Three months out of high school.

Far more mystifying — and disturbing — were the “progressive” students who wanted to be business majors. Why would you want to get a business degree if you believe that capitalism is the most evil thing since Hitler? But more to the point, this kind of thing points to an unsettlingly skewed view of how the world operates and a stupefying lack of self-awareness and introspection, because they apparently don’t see the inconsistency. We would joke among each other about students who would say in class that government intrusion (read: regulation) is good for business, but it really isn’t funny when you think about it. It’s like somebody who is opposed to ever adding 2 and 2 doing a math major.

Granted, there aren’t many of these. Business students are an entirely different animal from liberal arts students. Business students are fiercely competitive, motivated, and goal-oriented. And most of the hippie wannabe types believe business students to be something akin to vampires, and avoid them like the plague. But there are the handful who decide, for some bizarre and inexplicable reason, that they want a business degree.

Back in the 70s when I was an undergrad, we had cults. Today, we have ultra-loony-leftist liberalism. It’s one thing when it permeates the university; students are, after all, on the verge of becoming adults and have to take resonsibility for their own lives. But when it has infected the public schools, well, they’re not adults.

Darren last week posted an article about the student wanting to help the people of Darfur by eating burritos. He ended up taking some heat for what he said, and the above is the reason I came down on his side of the issue. Something is very out of whack in the school system, and somebody needs to inject a bit of realism. These kids need balance, not indoctrination.

Liberals are fond of talking about power, and in one thing they are correct: We do hold power over students. This is precisely why leftist indoctrination passing itself off as education is an abuse of that power, and should be strenuously punished.

And that’s My Word (again, apologies to John Gibson).

So President Logan not only negotiates with terrorists — he immediately gives in to them, and agrees to let them bomb the visiting Russian PM and his wife. Wait, that was last week, and he’s reached new lows. His wife got in the car with the Russians, and this gutless wonder is going to sacrifice his own wife.

What a Democrat.

The worst thing is he’s caught by CTU (though CTU doesn’t know that he knew), and makes the decision for him. That’s too bad. I mean, it saved lives ultimately, but President Demorat escaped the noose.

What I don’t get are the people who actually want scum like this in the White House.

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So much for “tax cuts for the rich” …

Politics are interesting here in Pennsylvania — and in Ohio and Maryland. In Ohio and Pennsylvania, Lynn Swann and Ken Blackwell are running for governor, and in Maryland, Michael Steele is running for Senate.

And in all three cases, they are giving the Democrats panic attacks. Why?

They’re all black, and Swann and Steele are running neck and neck in the polls with the Democrats (actually, Steele is leading in the most recent Rasmussen poll). Blackwell was ten points behind in the last poll I saw, but he has to fight the stigma of Taft, the state governor with the lowest approval rating in the United States.

Steele and Blackwell have been attacked with the same “oreo” rhetoric Condi Rice got, though so far, Swann has not. But this time, it’s not working.

These are exciting times, certainly. And what would three elected black Republicans do to the Democrat minority plantation, when people see that conservatives vote for minority candidates, and don’t wear KKK hoods?

With all due respect to J.C. Watts, here, this is the Year of the Black Conservative.

It seems the general ambassador for the Taliban is going to Yale. Michelle Malkin says:

Bash Yale, by all means. But Yale didn’t approve Hashemi’s student visa. That would be the Bush administration’s State Department.

Michelle is half right. In order to get a student visa, the person has to have an I-20 from a school or university, a document that says that he has been accepted to study there.

Blame both, since Yale issued the Taliban ambassador that I-20, and the state department issued the student visa.

Given that schools (and universities) are big bureaucracies, and given that I am a conservative, I shouldn’t be surprised at any lack of efficiency in the classroom. But as someone who has been teaching since 1987, I can’t get past one small issue:

Doesn’t Mr. Ed Degree care if his students learn the material or not? Doesn’t he at least care if they can pass the exam to graduate?

I’m trying to imagine if I did this “discovery” stuff, and what a mess it would be. Class would go something like this:

“Break up into groups. Now today, we’re going to learn how to do optimizations. An optimization is a type of problem that gives you the best answer, given the information you know, and one or more constraints.

“For example, let’s say we sell refrigerators and stoves. Each refrigerator costs us x, and each stove costs us y. We sell refrigerators and stoves at z markup. Each refrigerator takes up t square feet of space, and each stove takes up u square feet of space. We have a budget of v, and our available warehouse space is w square feet.

“Your group needs to find out how many refrigerators and stoves to order in order to maximize our gross margins, given the above information. Have at it.”

Sheesh, what an utter trainwreck that would be! Most would try trial and error, and of course, you can do it that way, but who would — provided you know how to set up and solve an optimization problem?

We’d get to the end of the class, and students still would not know how to set up and solve an optimization problem. They would likely learn what a pain it can be, but that’s about it.

Or worse, stats by “discovery”:

“Break up into groups. Today, we’re going to learn all about comparing means to expected values.

“We make cereal. Each box of cereal is supposed to contain 12 ounces, but of course, we can’t weigh each box. So we need to sample our boxes of cereal, calculate the mean weight of that sample, and compare it to the expected value of 12 ounces — and if there is a difference, we need to evaluate whether that difference is statistically significant or not.

“For the next fifty minutes, your goal is to “discover” how to do this. Have fun!”

What a nightmare! And would any of them come up with a t-test by the end of the fifty minutes? So what would we have gained by doing this experiment in student “creativity” here?

The problem with this is twofold: it’s inefficient, and you don’t accomplish your goals. Sure, I think letting students be creative is great — but not at the expense of their education.

I have much the same reaction to learning styles (or modes). Who has the time to cover something using all of the possible modes? That’s what office hours are for.

As I’ve pointed out, constructivism can be a powerful pedagogical tool when it’s done the right way, and given the right kind of material. I don’t, necessarily, object to constructivism; I do object to wasting time, just to play with chic and trendy educational “theories.”

And I particularly object to it, given that the results of tests show that students are not learning the material. These educators that keep doing this nonsense, despite the fact that it’s not working, are, by Einstein’s definition, insane: they’re beating their heads against a wall, hoping that the next time they do it, it won’t hurt.

Well duh.

Testing (which I’ve talked about before) seems to come back to haunt me, or did, when I read this report on a “fuzzy math” presentation (hat tip to Darren).

Why testing? Because the report brings to the surface an important issue, one that Mr. Raimi does not discuss (because he is tackling different issues).

The crucial concept that always gets lost in these debates about testing (I’ll get to the presentation in a moment) is curriculum. Moonbat educators are forever howling about the evils of “teaching to the test.”

Teaching to the test is teaching to the curriculum, or should be. If it isn’t, if the curriculum and test don’t match, then there’s a problem, and either the curriculum or test needs to be changed. For the moment, however, we will assume that we have no mismatch problem.

Every instructor at every level of instruction in every subject has a curriculum, that is, he has a set of goals to accomplish by the end of the semester. If you’re teaching Algebra I, you have a series of objectives you must reach by the end of that semester, a group of skills and concepts students need to learn by then. If you don’t get through everything, you have cheated your students. Even if you inflate their grades in order to cover for your own failure to get through the curriculum, you cheat your students.

And let me underscore that last point. Education isn’t about us, though teachers’ unions are all about nothing but instructors. Education is about students.

Given that we have a curriculum, let’s turn to the question of so-called “fuzzy math.” We’ll ignore everything but two issues.

First, it is grossly inefficient.

Why would anyone waste valuable class time by breaking students into groups and giving them worksheets, then hoping that the students “discover” that multiplication and division are inverse operations — especially when the instructor could show them and demonstrate it? This is grossly inefficient in terms of both learning time and individual learning. What about the students who do not make the discovery? Do they, then, not learn it, and do you, the instructor, just hope they learn it at some point in the future? Or do you resort to traditional pedagogy here, and demonstrate it to them — and if so, why didn’t you do that in the first place?

Second, it is counter-productive.

Math is cumulative. You have to understand arithmetic operations and their relationships in order to grasp algebra, you have to understand algebra, geometry and trigonometry to grasp calculus, and you have to understand probability in order to grasp statistics. Math is not language (which is not cumulative in the serial sense). Math builds, one skill upon another from bottom to top, and one skill requiring another, from top to bottom.

It makes no difference that there may be 34 different ways to solve one particular problem. Solving the problem isn’t the goal until you get to applied math; solving the problem is an exemplar of a principle, and the principle is the point.

Allowing students to “discover” or “create” their own algorithms or processes to solutions subverts the whole point of studying math. The student’s graphic solution to the turkey problem (from Mr. Raimi’s report) indeed gives the correct solution (though as Mr. Raimi points out, with different numbers, it would become far more complex to solve). But the student has learned nothing that will be helpful as he continues to study math, whereas teaching

3 : 1/3 :: x : 1/4
=
3 ÷ 1/3 = x ÷ 1/4
=
9 = 4x
=
4x = 9
=
x = 9/4

teaches, exemplifies, and reinforces basic arithmetical skills that the student will use over and over again.

Common sense time: If you were a math teacher, which would you do, allow students to “discover” and “create” their own algorithms, which even if they give the correct solution, may very well not reinforce valuable concepts, or show them how to solve the problem by using concepts that they will be using again and again in future math courses?

I didn’t know this nonsense was going on in schools, or I would have asked Mark if his math classes had been like this. He was very sharp, but lacked even the most basic math skills. Now, I wonder if this could be because he was allowed to “discover” and “create” instead of being taught math.

Certainly, if teachers are doing this, there is no way they can get through the curriculum — and it’s no wonder their students can’t pass standardized exams.

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We had MBAs teaching for us, which created a whole set of problems, but math was one of them. Let’s say a student comes in to your office hours and wants to know how well he has to do in order to get a B in the class.

Well, figuring that out isn’t hard. The total number of points for the class is 1000, so he has to get a minimum of 800 to get a B. So far, 500 points have been graded, and he has 350. So he has to get at least 450 out of the remaining 500 points.

IMNSHO, anybody teaching a business course should be able to do that. But no. We had enough MBAs who could not do it, either manually or in Excel (because of course in order to do it in Excel, you have to know how to do it manually), that we had to create an Excel file that would take the students points so far, the desired grade, and calculate how well the student had to do for the rest of the semester to get the grade.

But it gets worse.

We used to have the MBA teachers work the practical exams to give us an idea of how hard they were. When we first started this, it was a good idea, since the MBAs had some semblence of basic education, not to mention common sense.

I was one of the faculty heading up the exam run-through about five years ago. On the exam, there was an optimization (Excel Solver) problem, where given the costs and prices of x different types of candy, and constraints on the number of pieces of each type per box, total pieces per box and what types could be mixed, they were supposed to find the ideal mix of types in a box to maximize the gross profit margin.

It was a simple product mix. There was nothing tricky, or mind bending about it.

One of the MBA teachers raised her hand. I went over to her workstation, and she said, “Is this right?”

I looked at her screen. Her box of candy cost several thousand dollars.

“That’s an expensive box of candy there,” I said, taking her mouse. I brought up the Solver window, and she had put in no constraints.

“You forgot to put in your constraints,” I said. She just looked at me with her mouth hanging open. She had no idea what I meant — and she had “taught” her students how to set up and run Solver problems.

Then there was the MBA student who one day just told me he didn’t know anything about the introductory stats he was supposed to be teaching that week and asked if I would run through the material with him. It went something like this:

“If I flip a coin, what is the probability that it will come up heads?”

“Fifty percent.”

“Tails?”

“Fifty percent.”

“Each coin toss is independent of all others, right?”

Blank stare.

“If I flip a coin and it comes up heads the first time, what will it be when I flip it again?”

Blank stare.

“Each coin toss — trial — is independent of all others. The coin doesn’t know whether it comes up heads or tails, right?”

“Right.”

“So I could flip a coin twice, and get heads both times.”

“But the probability is fifty-fifty.”

“Yes, but each coin toss is independent.”

“Uhm, okay.”

“Meaning that I could theoretically flip the coin four times and get either four tails and no heads, or three tails and one heads, etc.”

“Uhm, okay. What’s regression to the mean?”

“We’re getting to that. If I do nothing but flip the coin all day long, say 100,000 times, I will end up with pretty close to 50,000 heads and 50,000 tails, because the more times I flip the coin, the more the results even out. That’s regression to the mean.”

“But I thought all tosses were independent …”

“They are. But because the probability that I will flip heads or tails is fifty-fifty, the more times I flip the coin, the close to fifty-fifty the results will be. That’s what probability is.”

“I don’t get it. How can that be if all tosses of the coin are independent …”

I ended up teaching his classes for him, though there was little point in it. The material only got more complex, and he had no clue. How can somebody who cannot grasp simple probability teach stats?

Not all MBAs were like that. We had some really sharp ones, and good teachers. But over the years, we had more and more MBAs who lacked the basics, and not to beat a dead horse, but just could not think in the abstract.

It was not uncommon, for example, for an MBA to want to know how to extract the data from a “story problem” and set it up in Excel. Given that the whole course was extracting data from “story problems” and setting them up and solving them in Excel, that was a problem.

Yes, some of them were just stupid. But most were not. They were just math illiterate.

On Casting Out Nines:

Note to Mr. Cohen: When a teenager who has a self-admitted distaste for algebra writes more intelligently and coherently about the usefulness of algebra than a professional journalist, it’s time to start rethinking what you think you know about algebra

Or maybe it’s time to rethink your profession, eh?

For those of you who don’t watch it, the evil aliens who feed on humans on Stargate: Atlantis are called the wraith. They’re basically pretty nasty, and evolved from bugs. See one, kill it. That sort of critter.

This last episode is about an experiment. They’ve formulated a virus that when given to a wraith, will turn him human (yes, yes, it’s sci-fi, for God’s sake). So they’ve turned this wraith human, but tell him he has amnesia and they don’t know his memory will come back. When he finds out he used to be a wraith and they lied to him, the guilt-ridden, hand-wringing moral equivalence begins, and continues with a furor.

Oh, and how are you any different from the wraith? He’s right, how are we different? (Well, you don’t go harvesting planets of humans, now, do you? Not that a liberal would understand that.) Oh, we abducted him from his ship! We violated his privacy rights! We turned him from an animal into a human being against his will! Call the ACLU! We’re evil! We’ve violated the purity of his ethnic heritage! Oh no! Call Barbara Boxer!

What complete horseshit. The only thing that’s missing is the celebrate diversity signs, the wraith ethnic identity consciousness raising seminar, and the whole group singing kumbayah. Battlestar Galactica will purge my head of all this moonbat crap, thank God.

I have a hypothesis. It’s not a theory — I have no research to support it (and have no idea at the moment if any such research has ever been done, but if you know of anything, I would greatly appreciate a citation).

I’ve mentioned the abstraction problem, and I’ve written about math illiteracy. And though I think Garelick is correct to a large extent, I think he’s missing a piece of the puzzle.

I think the missing piece is that part of the reason for math illiteracy — rather, the difficulty many have with comprehending math — is that they have difficulty thinking in the abstract.

I cannot help but wonder if the trend over the last twenty years toward making everything “relevant” has something to do with this. I’m a great fan of contextualization, grounding an abstract in the concrete so students can grasp the idea. But students have to be able to make the leap from concrete to abstract, and here, I believe, lies the problem.

Have we gone so far to the extreme of the concrete that we have hampered students’ ability to make that leap?

Mathematics is, of course, abstract in the most extreme sense of the word. Mathematics is, in fact, abstract to concrete, in the sense that the math skills you must have in order to perform applied math (read: concrete math) are abstract skills. You cannot set up a spreadsheet if you cannot solve an equation.

There is an inherent beauty in mathematics, in its regularity, its simplicity, its universality, its ubiquitousness, and its abstract nature. That same beauty underlies a Mozart concerto, a painting, architecture. That beautiful fractal is an equation. But that beauty is wholly abstract, and unless students can grasp the abstract, think in terms of symbols alone without using apples or profits as a crutch, they cannot see that beauty. Nor can students generalize from one context to another, because they are missing the vital abstract idea that underlies the contexts.

How can a student who lacks the ability to think in the abstract apply his knowledge to his life? Have we, by connecting all the dots for students all their lives, removed their ability to do so for themselves?

We always had the same recurring argument about the amount of handholding we should do for students. True, they are underclassmen, but at some point, undergraduates need to be weaned off the teacher-as-spoonfeeder and learn to learn for themselves. Yet how is this possible, if students cannot think in the abstract?

You’re waiting for an answer. I have none. I’m merely wondering. But any insights are welcome.

Ann Coulter is a pundit. And though she’s a highly intelligent woman, she has made an excellent career out of making excellent points (usually expressed as zingers), but not extensive argumentation.

Her audience is conservatives. She is often over the top (if that bothers you, look “hyperbole” up in your nearest dictionary), and always witty. Ann Coulter can cut through crap like a diamond-bladed saw.

If you’ve ever read her columns, you know this (unless you’re a liberal). It isn’t her job to make the arguments; it’s her job to do exactly what she does.

We have let liberals write the rules of discourse for too long. Conservatives have been scared to death of being called racists or sexists or whateverists, not because there is any racism, sexism, or whateverism in what they say, but because they’ve let the liberals write the rules.

Ann Coulter couldn’t care less about the liberal rules of discourse, and this is exactly why we need her — and it is exactly why liberals hate her so much.

I expected it to be much more of a zoo than it was, though there were plenty of liberals who tried to drown her out and disrupt her. Fortunately, most there were conservatives, and several times, chanted, “Throw them out! Throw them out!” when the moonbats started barking.

It would be reasonable to assume that some liberals there were interested not in drowning her out, but engaging her in logical argumentation. That is, after all, why there are questions and answers. Yet not one of the liberals at the microphone asked anything approaching an intelligent question (ironic, given that liberals are supposed to be so much more educated and intelligent). Not one. Every liberal question was either a Pointless Liberal Factoid (TM, Ann Coulter), a string of liberal myths, or an obscenity. And all the liberal questions weren’t questions, but pathetic attempts to score points against her.

The only intelligent questions were asked by conservatives.

Was there not one liberal in that packed auditorium who could ask an intelligent question? Or would he have been castigated, had asked Ann Coulter an intelligent question? Is that why the liberals made themselves look like idiots?

Not even one?

I’m glad I saw her. But it underscored for me just how ludicrous the “liberals are more intelligent” myth is, how they have lost the basic tenets of civilized behavior, and how sad and pathetic they are.

Okay, I laughed when I read about the student who yelled, “Remember Chappaquiddick!” at a Ted Kennedy lecture. I’ll even go so far as to say that liberals deserve it, after all the attempts they make to silence or drown out conservative speakers.

However, having just seen Ann Coulter and having just put up with the barbarians who act like children, I’ll say this:

He shouldn’t have done it. Yes, it was funny, and yes, they deserve it, but no, we shouldn’t act like liberals. However you may feel about Ted Kennedy, he has just as much right to speak as Ann Coulter, and attempts to silence or drown him out are juvenile, obnoxious, uncivilized, and anti-American.

My $0.02, anyway.

Dedicated to jimmyb and Wyatt Earp.

You know you’re in Pennsylvania when

• two out of every three vehicles have conservative stickers (flags, ribbons, W04, Bush-Cheney, NRA, etc.)
• you see no “no firearms” signs anywhere
• you start seeing Steelers logos everywhere you look
• you’re always driving around a sharp curve
• you wonder if you’ll ever see level ground again
• mountains (see above)
• coal mines (see above)
• you see bizarre road signs (left lane, buckle up next million miles, purple route)
• everybody is tailgating everybody else
• there are 25 miles between exits
• you hear mine shift updates on the radio
• you see Hershey’s ice cream ads
• Sheetz!

You know you’re in Ohio when

• you see a lot more vehicles with liberal stickers
• you see “no firearms allowed” signs everywhere (grrr)
• the flat “see for miles” landscape makes you so sleepy you have to turn the radio all the way up
• the flat “see for miles” landscape has you so bored that you think up “you know you’re in” articles like this
• you see Ohio State Troopers every half mile waiting to catch speeders
• you really have to pee but nearly all the rest areas are closed for no apparent reason
• you suddenly realize you’ve tuned to Hot Air America

You know you’re in Indiana when

• nine out of every ten vehicles have conservative stickers (flags, ribbons, W04, Bush-Cheney, NRA, etc.)
• you see no “no firearms” signs anywhere
• you see lots of mud-spattered pickups
• half of the pickups have gun racks
• driving becomes a “swerve to miss the potholes” game (well, not on the interstate, but as soon as you get off the interstate)
• you see all basketball references on cars and signs and no football references
• commentators on the radio are talking about basketball, even out of season
• you see references to FFA and 4-H
• you pass churches with turkey shoot signs in front
• you have to pass tractors
• you hear agricultural news on the radio

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So here we are in the auditorium. Sorry, but no moonbats outside — and they’re being very tight about security, and are making it very clear that howling and barking at the moon will not be tolerated inside. Sigh. I had hoped there would be some good pics.

Speaking of pics, I just realized that they’re allowing cameras in here, but my camera’s in my bag. Oh well. Maybe I’ll run and get it.

BRB.

–

6:30

Got the camera, and the stage lights are on (sorry, I won’t be able to upload pics in real time cause this camera sucks). I’ve run into several ex-students. Security guards at each side of the stage. And we’re sitting almost directly behind one of the microphones, so we’ll be able to hear all the questions. There are HUNDREDS of people here, and the lines were really long. Only one moonbat in wackjob regalia so far (but I’ve spotted another seriously wacko moonbat I’ve known for years, but thankfully, she didn’t recognize me). The auditorium is close to full — they won’t be able to seat many more in here.

This is going to be serious fun.

An undergrad we were in line behind just came up to me and asked if she could take a picture of me in my NRA sweatshirt. So I’ve been immortalized.

–

7:00

Possible moonbats at 2 o’clock. Either that, or conservatives that look like hippie wannabes. Much more likely to be moonbats. Maybe their heads will explode. Definite moonbats at 9 o’clock, drawing horns on Coulter’s pic on the program. Stealth moonbats. Shhhhh! Don’t tell anybody! There are LIBERALS here!

People are starting to get itchy. Random clapping. Don’t all these things start late?

A contingent in the back is shouting, “We want a date!” Nobody could hear what they were saying so it got real quiet in here for a minute. Funny. Ah. It begins!

“But enough about Jeanine Garaofolo’s ongoing problem with sobriety …”

They already threw out some distruptive drunk moonbats. And there was a standing ovation both for Ann, and the guards that threw the moonbats out.

She’s going off on John Kerry now. And my camera battery died.

“Bill Clinton, whose library will be the first presidential library to feature an adults-only section.”

More moonbats, and they’re being pointed out by the sane people. A chant: “Throw them out!”

Stealth moonbats — except for the nut in the sheet and the blonde wig.

“Boxer’s a great candidate for the Democrats: female and learning-disabled.”

“Liberals always like to play like they’re oppressed — so I say let’s oppress them.”

“There’s always a conflict of interest when people who don’t like America are asked to defend it.”

Another shouter. Couldn’t hear what he said — way in the back.

We’re waiting for them to get thrown out.

–

Another one. And he’s being ushed out. And Q&A.

A polite question. And here’s a quiz: do you think the questioner is a conservative or a liberal?

Another polite question — though a boring one (Can you tell us about some of your cases when you were practicing law in New York?)

Another polite question, this time from (I suspect) a libertarian, about whether the drug war should be stopped.

A nutball. “Who would Jesus bomb?” Get the guys in the white coats.

Another one. “Why are you dressed like that?”

And the moonbats are parading out.

Another one, “I heard you said that women should never do anything out of the house.” Ann: “I do lots of things out of the house.”

Most of the questions have been good — but maybe that’s because most of the nutjobs are gone.

Well, not all. One moonbat, but she’s gone.

And yet another peacenik.

It’s a string of moonbats. The last good question we had was five minutes ago.

And this is the last question: What can Republicans do to get more of the black vote? And this question was from somebody I have met, and assumed was a moonbat. Interesting.

–

Overall, I’m surprised there wasn’t more disruption, given the nuttiness of the student body (and faculty) at IU. Ann was a hardass about it, as she should have been, and stopped everytime some wackjob screamed something. All in all, though, it was much less of a zoo than I’d assumed it would be. She got to say what she came to say, and the uncivilized leftists who howled were tossed out on their ears.

I truly am sorry about the camera battery. I mean of all the times for it to die. But I wouldn’t have been able to get a really good closeup shot, so I guess it doesn’t make that much difference.

When one self-described liberal Christian asked her how she could defend her speaking tour, then turned around and called Ann a “nasty fucking Republican bitch,” I thought that about summed liberalism up perfectly.

And friends, I’m signing off. After I eat, I’m going to bed. I have to drive back to Pennsylvania tomorrow.

Good night.

the moonbats are completely losing it.

I just heard that the College Dhimmicrats are not organizing any sort of protest (the president is on the union board, the organization that is sponsoring Coulter’s presentation). That doesn’t mean there won’t be hippies out in force, of course, and I’ll be very surprised if there aren’t. But it could mean fewer moonbats than previously predicted.

We’ll see. Liveblogging starts a little after 6.

The blonde bimbo has gone from just being an idiot to defamation of character. In this gem of vindictive blather, Tits On A Chair crosses the line:

Since I informed Michelle and others that the only costs would be filing fees and costs, Jay volunteered to have the Paypal account for this set up at his site. That was a mistake (because Jay has since shown a predilection for stealing–more on that below). Both Michelle and I (and other websites) generously linked to Jay’s site (he was one of hundreds of people who contacted me), and we asked that people donate at that Paypal account. Mistake #2. We gave Jay and his site many links each time he asked (incessantly).

After I saw this, I waited to see if Michelle Malkin, for whom I have the highest respect, would mention this (since TOAC implies that Jay stole from her and Michelle).

Nothing.

It looks like TOAC has gone off the deep end — not that she was far from the edge. And she may be in some hot water, since another blogger she’s taken pot shots at works at Paypal.

Somebody get TOAC her meds and call the men in the white coats.

I have my trusty digital camera, and the moonbats will be frothing at the mouth outside the auditorium. I plan to take pictures, then begin with the moonbats on parade photoblog. Ann is scheduled to speak at 7.

No bags, no signs. No policy about pies, though.

Today’s Indiana Daily Student has an editorial about Ann Coulter’s presentation tonight, entitled Shut up and learn. There’s no point in quoting it; you should read the whole thing.

I suspect, however, that it’s an online-only editorial for a reason. Online-only or not, I’m sure it will get lots of angry letters from the bed-wetters.

So I’m back at IU, and nothing much has changed. In yesterday’s campus paper, we had a sterling example of guilt-ridden, hand-wringing leftist groupthink entitled So what can we all do to retain more black students?

So when IU sophomore Sara Alghani and senior Rodney Cobb invited IU’s historically black greek organization members to join fellow students and faculty to discuss and explore the issues preventing nearly half of IU’s black students from graduating, I was more than happy to RSVP.

Note the bolded wording above, because it’s crucial. Students — er, black students, that is disadvantaged, marginalized, disenfranchised students — are prevented from graduating.

Now, in English, this means that somebody or some institution would not allow the students to graduate, but of course, this isn’t English. This is liberalese. The students to which they refer were in no way prevented from graduating; they chose of their own free will to drop out.

But of course, since in the liberal alternate universe, we, er, well not we, but pet minority groups are idiots. They have no free will, nor do they have the intestinal fortitude, intelligence, or motivation to complete a degree unless they are given special perks.

Therefore, it’s the university’s responsibility that these students are dropping out. They’re mindless automatons, victims of a system that doesn’t coddle them enough.

In liberal la-la land, there is no such thing as personal responsibility, except for white, male, heterosexual conservatives. Everyone else is a victim.

I remember when, in February 2003, the Black Student Union sponsored a town hall meeting to discuss the Indiana Daily Student’s publication of a political cartoon satirizing affirmative action. The illustration, chosen from a wire service and printed in the opinion section of the paper, depicted a rather small-headed, large-bodied brother holding a sign that read “Being a minority — 20 points.” The character stood next to another character half his size — a white guy — holding a sign that read “Perfect SAT score — 12 points.” A final sign read, “Feeling entitled to special benefits: pointless.”

The cartoon was published on a Wednesday. On Friday, six letters admonishing the cartoon’s publication appeared in the Jordan River Forum.

See? Evil conservatives — rather, allowing anything but leftist groupthink — is responsible for their dropping out of school.

What bunk. Racist bunk.

The message is that these poor black students are too stupid, too lazy, too fragile to do the work, and this is why they need handholding, why they need to be protected from anything but leftist groupthink, and why they must be passed through.

Education? No. Just crap.

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Need more caffeine. Need more caffeine …

I got confirmation. I’ll be liveblogging Coulter, Thursday night starting sometime before 6 and 7 (it starts at 7, but we want good seats, so we’ll be going early, and you know there will be lots of moonbatty nonsense to report). I’m staying with conservative friends. So far, no loony leftists. But I’ll be spending all day today on campus seeing folks, so that means lots of barking moonbats.

Grin and smile. Grin and smile.

More later. In search of more caffeiene …

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Well, I’ve been here since about 4:30, but this is the first time I’ve plugged in the laptop and booted up.

For any loony leftists, vegans, envirowackos, Dhimmicrats, appeaseniks, peaceniks, terrorist sympathizers and moonbats in general who may visit, we have this and this.

Deal. With. It.

now, so I can get on the road by 7 am. That should (barring bad traffic on I-70 across Ohio) put me in Indiana around 5 this afternoon.

Btw, I hate driving. I really do.

I may or may not be back online before tomorrow morning. It depends on how I feel when I get there, and how much of my time has been planned for me (you know how that goes).

Yuck. Here we go. Yuck. I hate driving. I hate hate hate hate driving.

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I hate doing laundry.

Since I’m driving to Indiana tomorrow and I’ve been running around doing errands all weekend, I had to figure out what we were going to eat. That wasn’t hard to do, since I’ve had a craving since sometime in September.

All the pizza here is New York style, which isn’t surprising, considering that this is Pennsylvania. But sorry, New York style pizza is boring. I’ve been craving a deep-dish Chicago-style pizza, and if you want it here, you have to make it for yourself. So here we go. Oh. You’ll need a pizza pan — a Chicago-style pizza pan, with a rim.

Dough

3 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 c. cornmeal (plus a couple of tablespoons for the bottom of the pizza pan)
1 1/2 envelopes dry yeast
1/2 c. warm (110 degrees) water
1 T. sugar
1 t. salt
1/2 c. warm (110 degrees) water (no, this isn’t redundant)
1/4 c. olive oil

1. Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 c. warm water. Stir the sugar in until it dissolves.
2. Mix the flour, cornmeal, and salt.
3. Mix in the dissolved yeast, the other 1/2 c. water, and the oil
4. Mix until it cleans the sides of the bowl.
5. Knead for five or six minutes, until smooth.
6. Grease a bowl, put the dough in then turn up (so greased side is up), punch with two fingers, cover with a towel and let rise until almost doubled in bulk and the holes are nearly gone, about an hour or hour and a half.
7. Punch down the dough, then roll into a circle about 2 inches larger than the pan.
8. Oil the pizza pan with olive oil, then sprinkle the bottom with about two tablespoons cornmeal.
9. Lay the dough in the pan, pinch down the edges to form a rim. Puncture bottom all over with a fork, then sprinkle with olive oil and bake for 4 minutes at 475.

8 oz. whole milk mozarella
28 oz. chopped tomatoes
oregano, basil and salt
A whole bunch of pepperoni
shredded romano

1. If you want to be authentic Chicago, slice the cheese and put it on first. I prefer the tomatoes on the bottom. Either way, sprinkle the tomatoes with oregano, basil and salt.
2. Cover the pizza with pepperoni. No, you shouldn’t be able to see any cheese (or tomatoes). Completely covered.
3. Sprinkle with romano.
4. Bake at 475 on the lowest level of the oven for five minutes; raise, and bake for an additional 20 minutes.

Okay, pizza’s done, time to eat.

So I’ve been running around doing errands, getting ready for Monday’s drive to Indiana (I almost forgot this was Saturday, but I managed to get to the bank in time). Still doing errands, probably will tomorrow (laundry and so forth).

I’ll be blogging next week. Bloomington has wireless everywhere. But I still haven’t heard anything about liveblogging Coulter’s talk next week.

Via Rightwinged. The moonbats over on Kos are ripping Whittington a new one for the statement he made to the press. A few excerpts:

This shouldn’t surprise anyone (4.00 / 8)

This guy who was shot is a huge GOP donor. He’s the very definition of party over principle, and he’ll do whatever it takes — even take a bullet (or several) — to help his “team” win.

In fact, I’d be shocked if he’d said or done anything different. You can bet that Karl Rove has had this guy on speed dial all week.

by CleverNickName on Fri Feb 17, 2006 at 11:56:00 AM PDT

Haliburton (4.00 / 5)

Gotta wonder if Whittingon has stock in Halibuton. Didn’t it split yesterday?

Winning without Delay.

by ljm on Fri Feb 17, 2006 at 11:57:52 AM PDT

Ratings (none / 1)

Just read that the Cheney interview garnered big ratings. I don’t have a clue what this means - are viewers seeing a lying criminal when they watch him, a poor victim of a firing malfunction. Damn you, Mr Whittington, for obstructing Cheney’s pellets!

by anotherCt Dem on Fri Feb 17, 2006 at 12:06:11 PM PDT

So why hasn’t the DEA raided these nutcases? They’re obviously all on some seriously bad drugs.

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There is always some wacky theory (which in many cases, is not a theory in any sense of the word) in every academic field, and in most cases, the nuttier it is, the more fashionable it becomes. In writing pedagogy and second-languge writing, the nutball fashion du jour is contrastive rhetoric (CR).

If it seems like I’m picking on this particular wackjob “theory,” I am — only because it’s even stupider and less grounded in anything approaching reality than most nutty academic fashions. It’s worse than implausible; it’s utterly ridiculous — and its fashionability is driven by identity politics. It’s also champoined by that wackjob of all wackjobs, the Queen of Anti-scientific Research, Ulla Connor.

Before I go on, yes, those are sneer quotes around the word, “theory,” and they are there because this particular “theory” is not a theory in any sense of the word. It is based on nothing facutal, it is untestable, and of course, it cannot be disproven. It is therefore non-scientific gobbledy-gook, nothing more than pure imagination that has nothing to do with reality.

At its most basic, CR is the “theory” that speakers of different languages have different rhetorical styles, a “theory” brought to us by another nutjob, Robert Kaplan. In this, its most basic form, CR is uncontrovertible. However, when you take CR past that idea, so general that it is useless, it becomes pure fantasy.

CR advocates believe that if they take these different rhetorical styles into account, they can more effectively teach speakers of other languages to write in English.

The first, and most basic, problem with this is that even if all these languages do have different rhetorical styles, almost none of the students who are learning to write in English know anything about them. Rhetoric is not a part of natural language; if it were, nobody would ever have to learn how to write because we would all naturally learn rhetoric as we do language. Given that the illiteracy (wrt writing) of non-native speakers is at least as high as ours here in the United States, none of them would be aware of, much less use, or have to unlearn, any of these alternative rhetorical styles.

But it is the second problem that takes CR from merely another poorly thought out, fashionable non-theory to the realm of Alice in Wonderland on bad drugs. CR advocates love to “study” these alternative rhetorical styles, and describe them. So Chinese has a spiral rhetorical style, whereas Proto-Maltese has a figure-eight shaped rhetorical style and Martian has a lobster-shaped rhetorical style with a Z-hook on the end, and so forth.

Little graphics have a hypnotic effect on academics. If you go to a CR paper presentation, you will be surrounded by mouth-breathing academics drooling all over themselves as they look at the spiral patterns on the slide. It’s no wonder CR is so popular — it’s nothing but meaningless little patterns.

However, if you manage to keep from being turned into a zombie, and if you ask a question like, “Could you show me, please, where you came up with that spiral shape out of the writing sample?” you will see a cornered rat. So far, not one single CR advocate has been able to actually show how the words map onto the cute shapes.

In other words, it’s hogwash.

It’s not like this hasn’t been pointed out. Kaplan, nutcase extraordinaire, came up with this “theory” in 1966, complete with lots of cute, psychedelic graphics. It caught on for a while, until too many people asked that question I mentioned above — or they all stopped taking LSD. It wasn’t until the disaster of post-modernism, and the resulting antagonism toward anything testable or empirical, that CR was resurrected, and today, it has disciples all over the world. To make it worse, it has been adopted by the nuttier side of cognitive science (you know, the Steven Pinker “Norwegians have thinking patterns shaped like blue whale penises!” school of cognitive science), and that makes it even more chic.

However, its popularity is mostly political. CR, you see, supports the whole identity politics agenda. It also gives the educational system an excuse for failure: Jose can’t write coherent English because his native language has a vagina-shaped rhetorical style! It is one more excuse to lower standards for “disadvantaged” students, and ghettoize the classroom.

And it’s drivel.

So I got a response to my request to liveblog Coulter next week — a courteous, but odd, response.

He said he was looking into “internet access” in the auditorium.

Those of you who aren’t from Bloomington — that would be most of you — don’t understand why this is odd, of course, so I’ll tell you. Every inch of campus has wireless access. In fact, you can sit down with your laptop anywhere in Bloomington (not just campus) and connect to the internet, thanks to the university and the area’s number one service provider, who worked together to make every inch of Bloomington WIFI hot.

(Just an aside: This is not the case here, which I found really bizarre and hard to live with when we first moved.)

Back to the point. My battery life may be a potential issue, but not internet access. So I’m confused, and I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

The “Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program (LARK for short):

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You’ll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new division of the Terrorist Retraining Program, to be called the “Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program, or LARK for short.

In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided to place one terrorist under your personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence next Monday.

This is a great idea — wait, it’s already been done, and it didn’t work very well (and what Wikipedia doesn’t bother to tell you is that seven years after Abbott was sent back to prison for stabbing that man, Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon named their son after him). So here’s my proposal to fix LARK.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20016

Dear Concerned Citizen,

Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and Al Quaeda detainees currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. You have also sent us many letters complaining about the death penalty and the treatment of murderes and violent criminals in the prison sysem. Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinion was heard loud and clear here in Washington. You’ll be pleased to learn that, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new division of the Violent Criminal Retraining Program, to be called the “Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers” program, or LARK for short.

Under this new program, every liberal who whines about the treatment of terrorists at Gitmo or murderers in our prisons will be sent one terrorist or murderer (depending on the nature of the liberal’s complaint). The liberal will be held wholly accountable for the behavior of his or her terrorist or muderer. Therefore, if the murderer kills again, he and the liberal responsible will be sent to death row. Likewise, if the terrorist kills again, he and the liberal responsible will be detained at Gitmo and both will be tried by military tribunal.

We hope you liberals enjoy your pet murderers. You will, however, be forced to take responsibility for their actions — so you’d better do an excellent job at “rehabilitating” them.

Sincerely,

Donald Rumsfeld

There. That should fix the problem.

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Don Surber has this Jefferson quote in the header of his blog: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” I’m rapidly getting to the point that I think Jefferson missed the prime alternative: Newspapers without journalists. And Mr. Surber is helping me along that road.

Please explain to me exactly why these journalists believe they are entitled to some kind of chumfest with Cheney. The hunting accident didn’t have a damn thing to do with the government or his governmental duties.

And now that Cheney gave an interview to Brit Hume at Fox News, the journalists are even more incensed. See Michelle Malkin for links to videos of these so-called professionals going off the deep end about this.

Mr. Surber, who does have some common sense, badly needs to read what Thomas Sowell wrote about all this:

NBC White House correspondent David Gregory was shouting at White House press secretary Scott McClellan, as if Mr. Gregory’s Constitutional rights were being violated. It was a classic example of a special interest demanding special privileges — as if they were rights.

Indeed. We have here three issues:

• A press with a terminal case of Watergate Syndrome,
• A press who cannot stand the fact that Fox has bumped them from their “guardians of what you get to know” monopoly, and
• A press who believe that they are somehow entitled to be fed information from the White House.

Mr. Cheney is obligated to apologize to Whittington and his family — and I feel quite sure that I am correct when I say he already has done so. Other than that, he has no obligation to apologize to me, you, or the press, nor does he owe anyone any kind of explanation. None.

This is not “covering for Cheney,” as Mr. Surber is fond of saying. There is nothing to cover.

You want a story? Go out and dig for the information. But you aren’t entitled to one.

Ace identifies Arianna Huffyton as the Yoko Ono of politics. He’s almost right. Arianna is the Yoko Ono of leftist politics.

That leaves the Yoko Ono of the right-wing. And that dishonor belongs to Debbie Schlussel.

Let’s compare her to other, female conservatives, and you’ll see why she gets the Yoko Ono award.

She’s neither as intelligent nor as insightful as Laura Ingraham.

She doesn’t have the intestinal fortitude of Michelle Malkin.

She doesn’t have the wit or the poison pen of Ann Coulter.

Then, note that she responds to comments on her site in all caps, like some zitty, sixth-grade newbie. I have no doubt it’s intentional; I’m sure she screams frequently.

It’s not her cowardly, leftist-esque response to His Majesty. It was obvious that she was an idiot long before that.

Debbie is the blogosphere equivalent of tits on a chair.

Now sue me. Show me what a weak, cowardly, sorry excuse for a human being you are — or grow a pair, take the criticism you’ve brought on yourself, and prove me wrong.

I’m hoping to liveblog Ann Coulter next week. However, I’m still waiting to hear back from the contact person.

We’ll see, I suppose.

There’s a sidebar at the top of this CNN story that says (in bold text, I might add):

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has testified that his superiors authorized him to disclose prewar information.

Hmmm. It sounds like Libby is squealing on Cheney, doesn’t it? But if you actually read the story, you see this near the bot