Right Wing Nation

from Andrew Bolt. African leaders confirm: concern for the human rights of blacks is a white thing.

Jonah Goldberg laments that Rome is filming no new seasons. I think that’s a good thing.
Don’t misunderstand me: Rome was one of the highest quality shows on television. And those who disliked it because of the adult content, like Jonah’s correspondent, well, all I can say is if they had read Cicero or Suetonius, they […]

This is disturbing:
A father-of-two hanged himself live over the internet in Britain’s first ‘cyber suicide’.
Kevin Whitrick, 42, took his life after being goaded by dozens of chatroom users from across the world who initially believed he was play acting.
But as they watched in horror, Mr Whitrick climbed onto a chair, smashed through a ceiling and […]

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Professor W. Stephen Wilson did an interesting cursory study (the PDF is here). Professor Wilson is a math professor at Johns Hopkins. He obtained the SATM scores for his Calculus I for the Biological and Social Sciences students in 1989 and 2006, and gave his 2006 students the same final exam he gave his 1989 […]

because you’re not going to expect this. I like both Betsy Newmark and the Anchoress, but, well, let’s tackle Newmark first

There’s always Herwig’s. I give them major thumbs-up for the food.

A year ago today, I posted this rather sad bit of news:
State College has no steakhouse—and no, Outback doesn’t count. Let me rephrase that. State College has one restaurant that bills itself as a steakhouse, Down Under Steak House at Toftrees. We’ll see. We’re going there tonight for my birthday dinner.
It’s the only place in […]

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An update on that Charleston poll:

Fred Thompson
688
57%

Rudy Giuliani
213
17%

Newt Gingrich
86
7%

John McCain
83
6%

Mitt Romney
51
4%

Tom Tancredo
42
3%

Sam Brownback
15
1%

Duncan Hunter
17
1%

1195 total votes

And Pajamas Media finally decided to add Fred to their poll:

Fred Thompson

1053

43.10%

Rudy Giuliani
427
17.50%

Newt Gingrich
239
9.80%

Mitt Romney
230
9.40%

Ron Paul
151
6.20%

Tom Tancredo
121
5.00%

Duncan Hunter
83
3.40%

Tommy Thompson
68
2.80%

John McCain
40
1.60%

Sam Brownback
24
1.00%

George Pataki
8
0.30%

Total votes: 2444

Interesting.

I thought this was about Battlestar Galactica. After all, the title is “I Can’t Wait Until 2008″ and it links to a video.

I saw a news blurb on TV yesterday that said the illiteracy rate was higher in DC than the rest of the nation. Then today, I saw this:
Yesterday, DC Public Schools announced “major” changes to their high school curriculum. At a time when high schools across the country are focusing on improving rigor, offering […]

The Carnival of Education is posted.

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I saw this on Photon Courier:
But parents are not simply shirking their own responsibility, they are encouraging kids not to take any. “There is a tutor culture [of] parents who don’t let their children fail once in a while. They’re scared it’ll look bad on their record,” says Caleb Rossiter, a professor at American University, […]

The nutty SF Board of Supervisors took time out from passing bills proclaiming solidarity with head-chopping terrorists to fight a true enemy: Plastic bags!
Legislation to require the use of compostable or recyclable bags by grocery stores in San Francisco was expanded Thursday to cover large pharmacy chains operating in the city.
Extending the reach of a […]

Jules Crittenden proposes Moron Offsets–and gives a long list of candidates.

Thanks to Don Surber for pointing out this poll (still open):

Who should Republicans nominate next year?

Sam Brownback
12 votes
1%

Newt Gingrich
76 votes
7%

Rudy Giuliani
190 votes
17%

Duncan Hunter
14 votes
1%

John McCain
72 votes
6%

Mitt Romney
45 votes
4%

Tom Tancredo
36 votes
3%

Fred Thompson
631 votes
58%

1076 total votes

Hmmmm . . .

It’s unlikely that you’ll find yourself in southern Indiana. Most of it is accessible only from two-lane state highways, and these days, nobody goes anywhere unless there’s an exit off an interstate. That’s really too bad, because southern Indiana is beautiful, and there are some great places to eat there.
If you’re down by Amish country […]

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How do I now? Because he said this:
I think I need to reach for the duct tape and wrap my head, because if I see one more editorial calling for someone to figure out what practices help schools succeed, my head is going to explode.
And the duct tape meme is Beck’s. Read the whole thing: […]

Yesterday on a tip from Rory (by the way, if you didn’t hop over there and read his article, you really should do it now to see what an insufferable bozo Superintendent RainSpirit is), I saw that Superintendent SnowJob claimed that he had eradicated the white/minority (or should that be non-minority/minority, or perhaps privileged/minority?) achievement […]

There has been much ballyhooing and moaning and sobbing and blubbering lately about this:
BOSTON (Reuters) - Harvard University’s undergraduate tuition will rise 3.9 percent next year to $31,456, increasing at a pace nearly double the U.S. rate of inflation, a Harvard statement showed on Wednesday.
The total cost of tuition, room, board and student services fees […]

Ken sent me these data. Observe:

Reading Scores

Improvement

2004

2005

04-05

Wisconsin
84.9
87.4
2.5

Madison
80.1
82.7
2.6

Madison RF*
72
66.5
-5.5

Milwaukee DI**
55.7
61.8
6.1

*These are the four Reading First-eligible schools that turned down funding to continue whole language instruction.
**These Milwaukee schools started using Direct Instruction in 2003.

And for chart fans:

Disclaimer: The raw reading score is meaningless to me. However, I think the […]

Technorati: yoga, chakras, new age, fashionable nonsense, feng-shui, chi energy, slate, slate magazine, moonbats, idiots, morons, nutcases, wackjobs, leftists, liberals, progressives
On the dependably nutty Slate magazine: The Hostile New Age Takeover of Yoga. No, I’m not making this up–go see […]

Update: Link corrected (thanks, Rory).
I saw this over on Rory’s site:
Today, [Superintendent] Rainwater said, no statistical achievement gap exists between the 25,000 white and minority students in Madison’s schools.
Given the apparent inability of Wisconsin’s educrats to interpret data (see here and here), I thought I’d check for myself–after all, that’s quite a claim the […]

Thanks to Ms. Cornelius, I saw this:
Yesterday, the St. Louis City Public Schools was officially stripped of its accreditation and placed under the control of the state.
But it gets . . . interesting:
St. Louis school students ended their five-day sit-in at City Hall this afternoon after announcing they would take their concerns to Jefferson […]

Jules Crittenden is insensitive–entertainingly so.

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Free Born John says from across the pond:

Jonah Goldberg:
Edwards is a saint when he drops out. Edwards is a saint when he doesn’t. I don’t have a major problem with the sentiments of either post taken individually, but taken together, we can now see that the intervals between self-contradictory statements by Sullivan has fallen to a mere 22 minutes. Pretty soon the […]

The government encouraged them.

Susan Estrich remembers Cathy.

And I’m not exaggerating. You’ve been warned.
Why the death penalty needs to be expanded beyond murder.

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If you recall, I ran a statistical analysis of Wisconsin’s reading proficiency stats, and found that Madison’s Reading First schools could not validly claim that they had raised their proficiency levels. That analysis, of course, rested upon the assumption that Wisconsin had not changed their standards between 98-99 and 04-05, an assumption Ken DeRosa challenged:
As […]

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Cathy Seipp has passed away.