« March 2008 | Main | May 2008 »

April 30, 2008

I Can Has Educashun?

Here's hope for the future: 53 percent of 12-graders in America failed the Department of Education's NAEP assessment tests in U.S. history conducted in 2006. And this is actually an improvement over the results from the 2001 edition of NAEP, which 57 percent of 12-graders failed.

Then we have this report (PDF) from Common Core, a liberal arts advocacy group, which includes the lovely tidbit that only 43 percent of 17-year-olds placed the Civil War correctly in the period 1850-1900. 43 percent. That might explain some of the answers in our slavery thread (our longest ever?), but is still disconcerting to say the least. Might we be emphasizing standards in math and science to the detriment of the liberal arts?

(from)

Posted by David Darlington at 09:50 PM | Comments (6)

April 27, 2008

Happy Pascha!

Today our brothers and sisters in the Eastern Churches celebrate the Resurrection of Our Lord, a quirk of the Julian/Gregorian calendrical split, but more closely following the Jewish calendar.

Christ is risen from the dead,
Trampling down death by death,
And upon those in the tombs
Bestowing life!

Enough with this modern crapola, the occasion seems right to direct your browsers to Ancient Faith Radio, a wonderful Internet station brought to our attention by Matthew Stevenson.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

April 26, 2008

Treason in Defense of Slavery Month

Being a Yankee, it has escaped my attention that some governments have been designating April as 'Confederate History Month.' One could hope that these people might be history buffs who also want to see something like 'House of Tudor Month' or 'Jin Dynasty Month.' But, alas, they are in earnest in thinking that the Confederate States of America are worthy of public honor. This is unfortunate, for, as 'Lawyers, Guns and Money' rightly notes, the central tenet of the CSA was Treason in Defense of Slavery.

To be charitable, I'll concede that many Southerners really do not intend their Confederate nostalgia to be a racist gesture. As Matthew Yglesias notes, "as best I can tell these days (it was different in the past) most of the folks who like to wave the Confederate flag are perfectly genuine when they get offended that others see them as waving a banner of violent white supremacist ideology." Jon Henke elaborates:

Most Southerners have a relationship with the Confederate flag that has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. Over many years, it gradually became a symbol of regional identification, pride and, yes, rebellion. But rebellion in the sense of "James Dean" rather than "secession" . . .

In the South, the Confederate flag symbol is somewhat akin to the Washington Redskins name and logo, which also has offensive racial connotations. Owning/supporting a Confederate flag is generally understood to be no more intrinsically racist than, e.g., supporting, or owning the logo of, the Washington Redskins. The understood symbolism simply isn't racial.

On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, "a banner of violent white supremacist ideology." Many people, correctly, are deeply disturbed by the thing; they have no obligation to pretend it is anything but a banner of the ugliest, most inexcusable policy in American history. [I would place our peculiar institution behind aboriginal genocide as our ultimate sin. -- ZW]

This is only partially exculpatory, as it only excuses (some) Southerners from being overtly racist. Their remaining sin is that they are dupes.

The pretension that the Confederacy was about something other than the right to hold human beings in chattel slavery is a Great Big Lie. Its formal name is the "Lost Cause," a campaign to whitewash the depravity that the CSA took up arms to defend. And even if Southerners sincerely believe the Great Big Lie, they are guilty of perpetuating it. Their stubborn refusal to acknowledge that the rest of us are in the right to take offense at their celebrations is galling. Only a few moments of reflection will convince one that such campaigns have worked all too well in the past and are active in other parts of the world today.

The ironic thing about Confederate Nostalgia is that blacks were not the only group who stood to lose if the South won; the poor whites who fought and died for Dixie were also fighting to preserve an economic system that held them in subservience to the landed aristocracy. While a far cry from the horrors of slavery, it was hardly a system worth preserving -- or a system worth honoring, especially among its modern inheritors.

Posted by Zach Wendling at 05:23 PM | Comments (87)

April 24, 2008

Quote of the Day

"Do you think America wants hope right now? Because fear seems to be winning."

-- Stephen Colbert, April 24, 2008

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 08:54 PM | Comments (3)

April 23, 2008

Book Review: Sex, Sushi, and Salvation

The good folks at Moody Publishers recently sent me a copy of Sex, Sushi, and Salvation, a new book by Christian George. We've done book reviews before here at ITA, but I've never been been solicited to do one. I feel a bit like Tim Challies.

There's a minor genre these days of 20-something authors writing to their peers and trying to illustrate truths through autobiography. The most prominent examples from within the Christian framework are Lauren F. Winner and Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz). 26-year-old Christian George joins the fray with his third(!) book, Sex, Sushi, and Salvation.

The subtitle of the book is "thoughts on intimacy, community, and eternity." George's thesis is that all humankind has an innate desire for those three things, and that ultimately those desires can only be fulfilled perfectly by God Himself. It's not a thesis that George rides hard though, trying to shoehorn every idea into one of those three points. In fact, Sex, Sushi, and Salvation meanders gently between personal anecdotes and larger theological arguments--lingering more on the later--and it's these theological sections that set the book apart from others in the genre. Christian George is the son of respected evangelical scholar Timothy George and a rising PhD candidate in theology himself, and in his book he demonstrates a strong knowledge of the Bible and a grounding in Christian thought (C.S. Lewis, Thomas Merton, Saint Francis of Assisi, Charles Wesley, and various Reformed heroes make appearances). This keeps him anchored on firmer theological ground than say, Donald Miller (though I'm a fan of Miller as well). George uses his knowledge to greatest effect when he's prophetically pushing the church to spit out "cotton-candy" theology that doesn't challenge anybody and makes promises more in line with the American dream than with anything put forth by Christ. "There's more to life than computerized slippers and sexy ring tones," he says, as he challenges his readers to look for a more honest, authentic, and potentially dangerous, faith.

This being an autobiography, the book also has a few memorable anecdotes as well. My personal favorite was when young Christian and a high school buddy were kicked out of a Pentecostal prosperity gospel church for refusing to speak in tongues on demand ("you must have unconfessed sin in your lives!" they were told). George uses this as the jumping off point for his dissection of the American dream church. There's also a sad (and a little creepy) story of a pet hamster "Fluffy" that starts the discussion of human depravity and suffering. Frequently, George will use memories of international travels with his scholar-missionary father to link to related biblical events.

Christian George's prose is smooth and refined, though occasionally over-written. I think if you're within this book's demographic--that is, the author's generation--it's a decent addition to a library.

Posted by David Darlington at 10:08 PM | Comments (0)

Political Shorts

1. A blogger for the liberal magazine Mother Jones calls Hillary Clinton "the undead" candidate. She doesn't have a shot at winning outright, but she has enough support to justify, to her at least, staying in the race.

2. In other news, there's still a conservative who cares about civil liberties, privacy rights, small government, and stopping the unchecked expansion of executive power. Ladies and gentlemen, former House Manager for the Clinton impeachment, now Libertarian Party presidential candidate, Bob Barr. Ron Paul with less crazy? Color me interested.

3. An Inconvenient Truth 2: Hybrid Boogaloo

4. Indiana, you're on the clock.

Posted by David Darlington at 07:54 AM | Comments (19)

April 22, 2008

Trapped

Nicholas White was trapped in an elevator in New York City's McGraw-Hill building for forty-one hours. Click here to watch a condensed look at White's ordeal, as captured by the building's security cameras.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:05 AM | Comments (3)

April 21, 2008

The Limits of Legitimate Art

It was Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer who most famously placed art front and center in the examination of a society's worldview. When most Christian leaders were focusing on teaching and preaching, Schaeffer sought to remind us that one can worship God through art. Or, as he put it, "art work can be a doxology in itself." In my mind, no theologian has understood art or its impact as well as Schaeffer. Thus, I couldn't help but wonder what he would've thought about a couple of "art" pieces that came to my attention recently.

First was Aliza Shvarts, a Yale art student who purposefully impregnated herself in order to abort the children. Gossip blogger Perez Hilton provides Aliza's full explanation, which is disturbing to a degree that I cannot describe. As the saying goes, you have to read it to believe it. But just in case you don't believe it, Aliza is willing to prove she did it, with tapes and all.

Not long after I learned of an "art project" in 2000 by Jonathan Yegge at the San Francisco Art Institute. Yegge took a volunteer, blindfolded him, gagged him, and then proceeded to engage in oral sex, give him an enema, and swapped feces repeatedly. This, in his mind, was "performance art."

Finally, I learned of Guillermo Vargas Habacuc's "art" in 2007 which involved tying a dog to a rope in an art gallery, and starving it to death. Here's a brief story on it all, along with highly disturbing photographs. Allegedly Guillermo has been invited to repeat the "performance" for the Visual Arts Biennial of the Central America this year.

"All meaning to all individual things or particulars was removed. Things were being made autonomous, and there was nothing to which to related them or to give them meaning."

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 12:00 AM | Comments (14)

April 17, 2008

Immersive Computing Environment

This is pretty cool. Some students in David Heddle's department at Christopher Newport University took all the components of a desktop computer and placed them in a fish tank filled with mineral oil. It's neat to look at, but I wonder if it provides improved cooling efficiency over a traditional air-cooled system?

Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:27 PM | Comments (4)

10-Word Reviews

As Neil Postman and Zach Wendling have noted, politics on television is the height of triviality. Rarely is anything noteworthy said and rarely is anything of substance discussed. Last night's Democratic debate was no exception. Thanks to my wretched cable company, which doesn't carry the Versus Network in its basic package, I was shut out once again from NHL playoffs, so I watched Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama go at it from the Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Those who missed it didn't miss much. The first hour was dedicated to rehashing the delightful talk radio "issues" of the last four months--Bittergate, Rev. Wright, Bosnian snipers, and flag pins. Later in the debate, we were subject to debates about Obama's friendship with William Ayers of the Weather Underground (this issue will not hurt Obama because, as Obama pointed out, President Bill Clinton pardoned those jokers), Clinton's strong defense of cops and fireman making over $100k a year, Charles Gibson's attempted use of the Laffer Curve to question Obama on capital gains taxes, and Clinton's slow morph into a Giuliani Republican (New York! 9/11!).

To make it easier on all of us, for all future made-for-television political events I'm going to institute a "10-Word Review" feature here on ITA. Any political event on television, be they rallies, debates, or State of the Union addresses, can be described in precisely 10 words. As such:

ABC uses questions submitted by talk radio; bitter Dems fume.

Posted by David Darlington at 07:12 AM | Comments (6)

April 16, 2008

Death to America! Didn't You Get the Memo?

This LA Times report on the internal workings of Al Qaeda brought a little smile to my face. According to documents captured in Afghanistan and Iraq dating from the early 1990s to the present, Osama bin Laden's terrorist buddies are a bunch of squabbling middle managers in an inefficient bureaucracy. The documents depict "an organization obsessed with paperwork and penny-pinching and afflicted with a damaging propensity for feuds." What happens when you betray an Al Qaeda superior? Do you lose your head? No, you get a nasty memo:

Mohammed Atef was furious.

The Al Qaeda leader had learned that a subordinate had broken the rules repeatedly. So he did his duty as the feared military chief of a global terror network: He fired off a nasty memo.

In two pages mixing flowery religious terms with itemized complaints, the Egyptian boss accused the militant of misappropriating cash, a car, sick leave, research papers and an air conditioner during "an austerity situation" for the network. He demanded a detailed letter of explanation.

"I was very upset by what you did," Atef wrote. "I obtained 75,000 rupees for you and your family's trip to Egypt. I learned that you did not submit the voucher to the accountant, and that you made reservations for 40,000 rupees and kept the remainder claiming you have a right to do so. . . . Also with respect to the air-conditioning unit, . . . furniture used by brothers in Al Qaeda is not considered private property. . . . I would like to remind you and myself of the punishment for any violation."

Gives new meaning to the phrase "toxic boss."

Posted by David Darlington at 07:02 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

Degree of Difficulty

The NFL announced its 2008-09 schedule today. It looks like the two most popular teams here at ITA got hit in the degree of difficulty category. Yikes!

What's up with the Patriots getting the easiest schedule in football? Having the 1-15 Dolphins and 4-12 Jets in your division certainly helps. Or is the NFL setting them up for another delicious Super Bowl disappointment?

The Colts' schedule is here.

Posted by David Darlington at 06:33 PM | Comments (1)

April 12, 2008

Shout to Whom Exactly?

This clip comes from the "Idol Gives Back" episode of American Idol, broadcast earlier this week. It's the remaining Idol contestants singing "Shout to the Lord" to close the show.

What's wrong with this clip? Well, as anyone who's gone to an evangelical church once in the past 15 years can tell you, someone excised the name Jesus from the first lines of both verses. It's an odd change, obviously not just done for time. Did an Idol contestant object? Was Fox concerned about broadcasting an overtly Christian song? It's still an obviously religious song -- even in its denuded state, no one is going to confuse this with one of those "Jesus is my boyfriend" praise songs that curse the church these days. For all the garbage Fox does broadcast, I find it hard to believe that the network got squeamish about the evangelical musical standard of the 1990s because "Jesus" appears twice.

Stylistically, it's a good tribute to the original. I personally prefer it a bit faster though. This song can drag when you're performing it.

(Hat tip to the Boars Head Tavern)

Posted by David Darlington at 11:26 AM | Comments (3)

April 11, 2008

Making the most of your 40th

San Diego's James Spring spent his 40th birthday doing something quite incredible. Click here to read a nice uplifting story not normally found in daily news reads.

Posted by Joshua Claybourn at 09:44 AM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2008

Ridiculous work situation of the day

I work in a building which was constructed about two and a half years ago. The bathrooms were installed with automatic flushing mechanisms and automatic sink faucets. At first these were nice features to have. But after about a year, half of them stopped working. The toilets wouldn't flush even when you pressed the manual flush button, and no water came out of the sink faucet no matter how long you waved your hand under it.

As it turned out, the only thing wrong was that the batteries needed to be replaced. But union rules did not allow the custodians to replace them; that was a job for an electrician. For some reason, it's impossible to get one of the company's electricians to replace the battery on a toilet flusher, so the custodians covered them with plastic bags to keep people from using them, and they stayed that way for months. Eventually, the automatic flush valves (whose only fault was a dead battery) were replaced with the old-fashioned manual kind. (Apparently, the company's plumbers weren't as busy as the electricians.)

Now the batteries on the other half of the fixtures are dead, and half the toilets on my floor are again covered with plastic bags until the plumbers come around and do a couple hundred bucks worth of labor because of a dead battery. Gee, I just love working in a company with big labor unions.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 05:23 PM | Comments (6)

These guys should have stayed home

Chinese paramilitary police in blue track suits have been guarding the Olympic flame during its tour around the world. But they are not just protecting the torch. They pounced on a French torchbearer who tried to wear a headband with a Tibetan flag, as well as an American torchbearer in San Francisco who pulled a small Tibetan flag from her shirt a she started her run.

These agents were selected from elite units of the People's Armed Police--an organization that has been involved in the crackdowns in Tibet. They are the communist Chinese version of the Schutzstaffel. My question is, why are the free nations of the world allowing these agents onto their soil?

Posted by Eric Seymour at 12:49 PM | Comments (2)

April 08, 2008

Should He Stay or Should He Go?

Related to Eric's update from yesterday, Red State has launched a petition urging President Bush to not attend the Olympics in China this summer because his presence, they argue, would "give the seal of approval on China's behavior" and "serve as a propaganda tool for the regime just as assuredly the lack of his presence will be noticed by the freedom loving people of China suffering Peking's communist boot on the back of their necks." This puts them on the side of Rep. McCotter, and oddly enough, Senator Hillary Clinton and Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The president is said to be weighing his options.

I'm with Eric and Megan McArdle on this one. Go but show solidarity with the oppressed people of China in some way. All this boycott talk is a little too Carteresque.

Posted by David Darlington at 06:26 PM | Comments (3)

The Illinois speech police?

A Barack Obama delegate in Illinois has resigned after being accused of making a racist remark about black children in her neighborhood. Linda Ramirez-Sliwinski says she told the father of one of two boys who had been playing in a small tree that "the tree is not there for them to be climbing in there like monkeys." Given the context, I very much doubt she used the word "monkeys" as a racial slur, but I understand why her resignation was necessary from a political perspective. What I really don't like is the fact that Ramirez-Sliwinski was issued a $75 ticket for disorderly conduct after one of the boys' mothers complained to police.

Now, I understand the "fighting words" exception to the right to free speech, but do we really want police to be handing out tickets for racial slurs even when there isn't a doubt as to the intent of the speaker? What's next, a Verbal Morality Statute?

Posted by Eric Seymour at 05:24 PM | Comments (2)

April 07, 2008

Beijing 2008--A half-century of persecution

The People's Republic of China is the largest perpetrator of state-sponsored religious and political persecution in the world. Although the communist party in China has been careful in recent years to avoid the kind of large-scale brutality that gained the world's attention during the Tiananmen Square protests, it has continued to interrogate, harass, and jail religious leaders and political dissidents on a regular basis.

When the 2008 Olympics were awarded to Beijing, many hoped that the event would force the PRC to improve its stance on human rights. Recent events in Tibet, however, have shown that you can't teach an old communist new tricks. The latest move by Beijing is classic totalitarianism: they are ramping up a "political education" campaign which includes requiring Buddhist monks to renounce the Dalai Lama and hand over any photos of him which they possess.

Rather than boycott the 2008 games, I am hoping that many of the free world's athletes find some way to show solidarity with Tibetans and embarass the communist regime. The attention of the world could yet force the PRC to change its ways.

Update: Congressman Thaddeus McCotter has introduced H.R. 5668, which would prohibit government officials and employees from attending the opening ceremonies.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 09:05 AM | Comments (17)

April 04, 2008

Super Duper Delegates

By now, everyone knows about the role of superdelegates in the Democratic presidential primary--the party officials whose convention vote is not bound by any election results. But not all superdelegates are created equal. Some of them effectively get more than one vote through their ability to personally appoint as many as five additional delegates. This system is starting to look like Calvinball to me.

Posted by Eric Seymour at 09:29 AM | Comments (2)

Where the Wild Things Are

Richard Florida, chronicler of the "creative class" and author of the new book Who's Your City?, posted an interesting map and article on his web site the other day. Florida's map tracks the disparity between the numbers of single men and single women between the ages of 20-64 in various metro areas around the country. Red circles indicate a surplus of single women while blue circles indicate a surplus of single men. Florida writes,

By far, the best places for single men are the large cities and metro areas of the East Coast and Midwest. The extreme is greater New York, where single women outnumber single men by more than 210,000. In the Philadelphia area and greater Washington, D.C., single women outnumber single men by 50,000. . . One reason young women in the prime marriage years - the 25-44 age range - flock to big cities is to compete for the most eligible men. And smart women who gravitate to vibrant cities are more likely to stay single - for longer, at least - because they rightly refuse to settle for someone who can't keep up with them intellectually or otherwise.

But women do have an advantage in the American West and Southwest. In greater Los Angeles, for example, there are 90,000 more single men than women. In Phoenix and the San Francisco Bay Area, single men outnumber single women by roughly 65,000. There are considerably more single men than women in San Diego, Dallas, and Seattle, too. Each of these regions has grown substantially over the past two or three decades, offering jobs in everything from high tech to construction and services. As numerous studies of migration show, men - especially those in regions with declining economies - are initially more likely to move long distances for economic opportunity, while women are more likely to stay closer to home and family.

People have no problem with moving across the country to get a good job. But considering how the choice of one's mate is at least as important as the choice of one's profession, should young singles be willing to relocate for love as well? To the bachelor willing to make the journey, there's only one answer -- Go east young man, go east!

Posted by David Darlington at 12:08 AM | Comments (5)

April 02, 2008

Not in this House

Kudos to former ITA contributor Ed Brayton for how he dealt with a person making racist comments at his weekly poker night. May we all have the courage to do the same thing.

This approach also works for sexist comments at guy's night, BTW.

(language warning)

Posted by David Darlington at 12:17 PM | Comments (2)

April 01, 2008

I'm Tom Servo and I Approve This Message

In the not-too-distant future, we're going to have to vote for one of these space children. In the meantime, we try to keep our sanity with the help of Michael J. Nelson, former host of Mystery Science Theater 3000, who is now using his special talents to riff on political commercials. See some results here and here.

It's just a country, I should really just relax.

Some samples:

Hat tip to my brother.

Posted by David Darlington at 08:10 AM | Comments (0)