Right Wing Nation

I didn’t know if I wanted to watch 24 this season (chill, chill). It got a little wacked out last season. But I TiVOd the four-hour premiere, the idea being that I’d watch, and decide whether I’d watch the whole season or not.

Silly me. Of course, I’m watching the whole season.

However, there are a couple of things that need to be said (IMHO). First, did we really need another bed-wetting, hand-wringing, “concerned” President Palmer? Sheesh, I had to put up with that guy the first two seasons, and now, I have to put up with his brother — who if anything, is worse — this season?

And his sister. Kill her soon. Slowly. Painfully. On air.

Are we really supposed to believe that the government had agreed to give Jack Bauer to a terrorist so he could murder him, only to get information against another terrorist? Come on. Seriously.

The vampire scene was pretty over the top, in an entertaining way. And why wouldn’t Jack Bauer bite out somebody’s throat? So was the scene where the precious, liberal hippie boy’s Muslim friend (”He’s not a terrorist!”) turned a gun on him. Unfortunately, the stupid little liberal didn’t get shot by his oppressed terrorist buddy, but only because Jack saved him (you wasted your time there, Jack; the stupid little SOB had it coming).

You can’t have everything. Hippie boy’s liberal daddy got killed, though. That’s something.

I’ve got to admit something, though. Jack’s not my favorite character.

Chloe is.

This season, no hiatus. It’s 24 every Sunday night. And speaking of Sunday nights and great TV, Battlestar Galactica resumes this Sunday.

One might think that liberals, as fond as they are of accusing others of hypocrisy, would pay close attention to their own words and actions, in order to avoid the same. But apparently not. In Marin County (thanks to Kathryn Jean Lopez), the crunchy granola, tree-hugging, tofu-munching rich set is vigorously opposing (are you ready for this?) Habitat for Humanity:

A growing legion of concerned neighbors in unincorporated Strawberry voiced fear Tuesday of increased traffic and decreased home values if a Habitat for Humanity housing development comes to the Eagle Rock neighborhood.

Note that they’re “concerned.” Of course. Liberals are always “concerned” (we had a colleague who was always going on at meetings about how “concerned” he was and what “concerns” he had, so we took water pistols to a meeting and told him up front every time he said that word we’d shoot him. He didn’t listen, and he got very wet, but he eventually got the point.)

Oh, but it gets better:

Echoing comments of several neighbors, Dealey described the entire project “out of character with our neighborhood.”

There we go, “out of character” with the neighborhood! Liberals have priorities like everybody else, and “being in character with the neighborhood” obviously trumps building houses for the less wealthy! Of course, if it were near somebody else’s neighborhood, and if it involved raising taxes (that the liberals will get out of paying) to build houses for these same people, these same liberals would be screaming about housing being a Constitutional right.

But it’s in their neighborhood, you see. That changes everything.

And I’m saving the best for last:

“To me it’s totally against the intentions of Habitat for Humanity as I know it,” he said before Tuesday’s meeting. “The intention always was to go into a blighted neighborhood and enhance it. The end result here is the opposite. It’s a lot of good intentions gone horribly wrong.”

The intention of Habitat for Humanity is to enhance neighborhoods? Really? Funny, since they do nothing but build houses for poor people it always seemed that their intention was to build houses for poor people and wait a minute, isn’t enhancing neighborhoods gentrification, and isn’t that something all good liberals oppose, like the San Francisco city planners who opposed every attempt to renovate the Armory until they sold it to a porn company (hat tip to North Dallas Forty)? But hey, what do I know? I’m not a liberal.

But the other thing — the really obnoxious thing — is here:

The intention always was to go into a blighted neighborhood and enhance it. The end result here is the opposite.

Oh indeed, it would ruin the neighborhood to let all those (shudder!) poor people in!

Liberals are just so cute. They’re so earnest, yet such fools.

Oh, but that’s not the only example in today’s blogosphere. Try this one, from the other nutjob liberal state, Massachusetts:

The young couple were struggling to get by on Martha’s Vineyard, living in a tent with their 2-year-old daughter, when they got the life-changing news: Through an affordable housing program, Andrea Dello Russo and Lucas Riordon had qualified to buy a small house on an acre of land — at a price far below the island’s soaring real estate values.

“It felt like winning the lottery,” said Riordon, who works as a carpenter and a fisherman .

A year and a half later, the couple’s dream of homeownership seems as far away as ever, blocked by 10 Chappaquiddick property owners, most of them seasonal residents of a neighborhood where three affordable homes are planned. Opponents of the new housing have gone to court, and have also taken a more direct tack: One couple, Cheryl and Robert Finkelstein , paid $287,900 last fall for an acre of land where one of the homes would have stood — seven times the $40,000 price a moderate-income family had agreed to pay for the lot.

Isn’t that nurturing and supportive of the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the disempowered! Buy the lot so their home can’t be built! How very compassionate! How exceedingly enlightened! How utterly liberal!

Oh, but it gets better:

Vineyard property owners who are fighting the new housing have come under intense criticism. On Saturday, a neighbor found a sign in the Finkelsteins’ driveway with the slogan, “Finkelstein Hall of Shame.”

Wait for it . . .

Finkelstein said she largely blames the hostile environment on Rappaport, who has called the opponents of affordable housing candidates for a “hall of shame.” She said she is treating the placement of the sign as a hate crime, and reported the incident to Edgartown police.

Hate crime! Hate crime! She’s oppressed! She’s disenfranchised! She’s disempowered! She’s marginalized! She’s a liberal and she whines!

But they’re not the only ones:

Chappaquiddick is not the only place on the Vineyard where lower-cost housing is meeting resistance. Construction of another group of 10 affordable homes in Edgartown, a development known as Jenney Lane, was delayed for more than two years by neighbors’ appeals, and an affordable condominium complex in Vineyard Haven, also challenged by nearby homeowners, is tied up in court.

Aren’t they cute? And they have the liberal buzzwords down, too:

They asserted that the three new homes would compromise their health and safety, and might also disrupt endangered species.

Oh well then! If it might harm your health — or far worse, endanger an earthworm or a roach, why, you’re morally bound to keep those awful people out! More power to you!

Cheryl Finkelstein said. “A particular kind of person chooses to live on an island off an island, in a wild area, and if you chose to live there, it’s because it’s the environment you wanted,” she said.

Obviously, some aren’t that “particular kind of person,” eh?

Moonbats are truly astounding creatures. Every zoo ought to have at least one.

The popular educrat myth is that education needs to focus on “higher-order thinking,” to the exclusion of developing actual knowledge. Looking at this purely from a “higher-order thinking” context demonstrates this to be a falsehood. Let’s choose an example from an undergraduate operations class, taken predominantly by freshmen. Here is the problem:

A customer requires during the next 4 months, respectively, 50, 65, 100, and 70 units of a commodity, and no backlogging is allowed (that is, the customer’s requirements must be met on time). Production costs are $5, $8, $4, and $7 per unit during these months. The storage cost from one month to the next is $2 per unit (assessed on ending inventory). It is estimated that each unit on hand at the end of month 4 can be sold for $6. Determine how to minimize the net cost incurred in meeting the demands for the next 4 months. Use named ranges, and list all named ranges and addresses, as well as all functions and formulas and their addresses.

The students are given a blank Excel file. They must analyze the problem, decide what kind of problem it is and therefore how best to solve it, extract the relevant information, construct a logical solution — all by reading the text of the problem — then use that information to set the problem up and solve it on the blank Excel worksheet.

So what kind of problem is it? Reading through the information in the problem, and the words chosen (”Determine how to minimize the net cost . . .”) reveals that this is an optimization, that is, a problem where the goal is to find the best solution given the data and a set of constraints.

We now know what the goal of the problem is. Now we need to extract the information:

• Orders over the next 4 months: 50, 65, 100, 70
• Production costs per unit, for the 4 months: 5, 8, 4, and 7
• Storage cost per unit from month to month: 2
• Price per unit, units on hand: 6

  Extracting the information means we also have to infer what the constraints are. Reading through the problem, we see nothing about budget (maximum total cost), or maximum units to produce, or a minimum total profit; in fact, we can infer only one constraint:

• Units produced must be greater than or equal to the number ordered, over each of the 4 months

In order to construct a logical solution, we need to know what kind of problem it is (we do), we need to have extracted all the information from the problem (we have), and we need to know what our goal is (we do). We also have to determine what calculations we need to perform, including what information we need as a result or solution. We have done neither of those things.

We know what our goal is: Minimize the net cost. What we don’t know is what data our solution needs to include. Sometimes, the problem will overtly state it; other times (like in this problem), it will not. To infer what our solution needs to be (since our problem does not overtly state it), we need to read through the problem, asking ourselves a question: What information do we need in order to solve the probem that isn’t given in the problem?

The number of units produced for each of the 4 months. That is the information we need to find.

And what calculations will we need to perform? Well, since our goal is to minimize the total net cost, we will have to calculate the total net cost. In order to do that, we have to multiply the number of units produced by the production cost per unit. But that’s not all. Scanning through the problem, we see that there are storage costs from month to month. Storage costs are for units produced in excess of the orders, and there’s another calculation. You get the idea.

The student’s worksheet should look something like this (click on the image to open a larger, legible one):

Looking at this problem in the context of “higher-order thinking” reveals that it is relatively complex, despite its mathematical simplicity. It’s a relatively complex problem that requires a linear, logical approach. But for the moment, let’s put that linear, logical approach on the back burner.

Fuzzy math proponents are forever claiming that what they term “rote memorization of algorithms” (or some similar sneering phrase) is not necessary because students can use their calculators. Calculators aren’t relevant here, but Excel — which we can think of as a super-calculator — is. And this problem demonstrates that the fuzzy math proponents are completely wrong.

Excel won’t do any of these things for you. Not one. Excel won’t analyze the problem, decide what kind of problem it is and therefore how best to solve it, extract the relevant information, construct a logical solution, or set the problem up and solve it on its own worksheet. The only tool that will do those things is the student’s brain, and if students don’t have the mathematical knowledge — all that “rote memorization of algorithms,” or some similar sneering phrase — they can’t solve the problem.

It’s as simple as that.

But there’s another, even more fundamental “higher-order thinking” reason the fuzzy math proponents are wrong. In order to solve the problem, students must approach it with a linear, logical process. Students who have gone through a “discovery-based” math program that eschews linearity and logic for Burger King math (”Have it your way!”) have been crippled. They do not have the cognitive tools other students have, and must either develop them quickly (unlikely) or fail (likely). I realize that letting Suzie cut up a piece of construction paper to determine (rather, estimate) the area of a circle may make teachers feel good about themselves, but Suzie will be mathematically retarded when she gets to the university.

Math hasn’t been taught since before Aristotle just for its own sake. Math has also been taught from the time of the Golden Age of Greece because it teaches those linear, logical thought processes that are so crucial in so many aspects of daily life — not to mention the university classroom.

Finally, fuzzy math proponents are wrong by teaching students that a problem can have many different solutions, teaching them to estimate instead of solve. There is only one solution — the correct solution — and all others are equally wrong. Students are often mystified when they turn in an often wildly incorrect solution and are first confronted with this grim reality. And they are mystified because their pre-university teachers have scratched them behind the ears and patted them on the heads like their little pet poodles and given them so-called partial credit for incorrect solutions.

You don’t get partial credit in the real world. You get fired if you can’t do the job, and do it quickly and efficiently. A student can use “what-if analysis” — plugging in numbers at random until coming up with what seems to be an ideal solution — but the student would get fired for it, only because of the gross inefficiency and wasted time and money involved. Sure, there may be several ways to solve — not estimate — a problem, but only a subset of those are efficient. Pedagogically, only a subset of those teach students the linear, logical thought processes they will need to succeed.

We aren’t here so much to teach students how to solve the problem as we are to teach students the quickest, most efficient route to solving the problem. If Suzie uses “what-if analysis,” she will get no credit. Allowing Suzie to cut up construction paper to estimate the area of a circle teaches Suzie that an estimation is as good as a correct solution, and that how she gets to the solution doesn’t matter, two falsehoods. Worse, “discovery-based learning” does not develop the linear, logical cognitive skills students must have if they are to succeed.

Even by the standards of fuzzy math proponents, their teaching methods are a disgrace.

The Clown Award will be given to whatever elected (or appointed) politician goes beyond the call of duty demonstrating a lack of knowledge of the Constitution of the United States. Today’s Clown Award goes to (wait while I open the envelope) Sheila Jackson-Lee, who holds the singular honor (now that McKinney is gone) of being the only member of Congress as stupid as Charlie Rangel!

And what has Sheila done to receive her little red clown nose? She wants to extend federal power over “hate crimes”! Or as Moonbattery puts it:

High-toned verbiage about how thou shalt not commit crimes “motivated by the actual or perceived race, color, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, gender, or disability of the victim” inevitably boils down in actual application to a simple principle: it may be bad to assault someone, but it’s worse to assault someone who is liable to vote Democrat.

Congratulations, Shirley! Keep it up, and we’ll send you your very own tinfoil hat to wear to Congress with your clown costume!

Jules Crittenden has moved.

Would somebody please tell me what Mel Martinez’s position on any issue has to do with his position as a fundraiser and a face for the Republican Party — or why these mouthbreathing paranoid morons have their panties in a wad?

Frakking idiots.

Comment or trackback, as long as you link to here.

Okay, I got a little carried away. It was good, but the roasted garlic overpowered everything. So let’s change that from 5 to 2 heads of garlic. Also, and I do this with soup, there’s way too many mushrooms on top of everything else for the amount of stock (which we’re going to increase). So let’s make that 3 oz. of mushrooms. And while we’re decreasing amounts, let’s cut the prosciutto in half.

Here’s the amended recipe.

Roasted Garlic and Mushroom Chicken Noodle Soup

2 heads garlic
extra-virgin olive oil

6 c. chicken stock
1/2 lemon
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 small package baby carrots, halved
3 oz. crimini or shiitake mushrooms
leftover chicken, diced
4 oz. egg noodles
2 bay leaves

1/2 t. black pepper
2 oz. prosciutto, shredded
salt

Preheat oven to 400, and prepare the garlic for roasting. First, remove the outer skin from each head, leaving it in one piece (and the skin around the cloves intact). Cut off the top of each head, so that the garlic is exposed. Place garlic heads on a large piece of foil, drizzle the tops generously with olive oil, and tightly wrap up in the foil. Roast for 30-35 minutes, until garlic is soft. Cool.

Bring the stock to a boil, then lower to a slow simmer. Squish the garlic out of the skins into the stock. Zest the lemon, and add the zest. Add the pepper and bay leaves, then add the celery and carrots. Cover and simmer for an hour or so, until the celery and carrots are tender.

Slice the mushrooms (if you’re using shiitakes, remove the stems!) and add to the soup along with the noodles and prosciutto. Simmer for 20-30 minutes (depending on the thickness of your noodles — if you use store noodles, reduce cooking time to 10 minutes). Add the chicken, heat through, salt if needed, and serve.

If you don’t have leftover chicken, you could start by cooking chicken in stock, water, or a combination until done, then using the chicken and stock.