evolution

When I have a dream and I start to see Dr. Nealy Newkirk and her perpetually-preserved smile in trans-fat free oil wrestling matches with that Spangles woman, it’s time to rotate the Goddam ads.

And probably time for me to lay off the tequila. But, whatever.

All right — at what point does someone not just punch these little brats in the face?

ACWORTH, Georgia (AP) — Georgia authorities Wednesday were searching for two young women, possibly teenagers, who robbed a supermarket bank branch, laughing as they held up a teller with nothing but sunglasses to disguise their faces.

The two handed a Bank of America branch teller a note demanding cash, smiled as they waited and then walked out with stolen money Tuesday, police said.

It wasn’t clear if they had a weapon, police said.

Here’s the surveillance camera picture, courtesy of CNN:

They’d better have God-damned good-and-well had a weapon. Otherwise, everyone in this bank at the time needs to be ticketed and fined for being a douche. Until I see the blue of gun-metal — and maybe even if I do — I’m slugging a laughing teenage girl robber in the mouth.

A California high school held separate pep talks on boosting test scores for its students, organized by race.

One of my problems with NCLB is that it basically sets up this very behavior. Proficiency scores are reported by “subgroup” — i.e., racial, economic, or special-needs categories.

The principal’s Orwellian response to critics:

Principal Bev Hansen said she held the divided student assemblies this year and last year to avoid one ethnic group harassing another based on test scores, arguing that the state has long reported test results based on race.

“In this country, race is a very uncomfortable topic, and it’s time we got over it,” Hansen said.

As one of the Newsvine commenters said, “Segregation doesn’t help people get over it. Getting over it helps people get over it.”

[Previously here and here]

The legislation sponsored by Rep. Lance Kinzer is about to turn into a pumpkin.

Good. Forget all the rhetoric from blowhard legislators and the teachers’ union’s partisan hacks. This legislation was a waste of time, attempting to do poorly what parents can do very well for themselves.

This caught my eye after my post on the use of the word “gay” as a synonym for “lame”, “silly”, or “stupid” (rather than for “someone in a same-sex romantic relationship”):

SANTA ROSA, CALIF. — When a few classmates razzed Rebeka Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, “Do you have 10 moms?” she shot back: “That’s so gay.”

The girl was hauled into the principal’s office and a letter was added to her file, which resulted in her parents suing the district on First Amendment grounds.

As I said, this turn of phrase is pretty juvenile. And, it seems no one was really worried about harassment based on religious grounds, as it seems to be open season on Christians (and particularly Mormons) these days.

It seems a shame for such a storm to descend on a young person for simply having shot off her mouth.

So I’m debating with myself. As you know, I just (unofficially) passed the Society of Actuaries Course P exam. I’m debating whether or not to sign up for the next offering of the Society’s Course FM exam, which will be offered the last week in May and early in November.

If I take it in May, I will be better able to get an entry-level actuarial position sooner. But the next three months would be a bit like the last three, and I don’t know if I could be a studying machine for that long. On the other hand, November is a long time to wait.

Going back to my post on blogging ethics, it’s nice to know that if one of you flaps your lips a little too much, I can sell you out without too many problems: Federal court reaffirms immunity of bloggers from suits brought against commenters.

Meet State Rep. Lance Kinzer (R-Olathe): douchebag.

The House Federal and State Affairs Committee has recommended approval of House Bill 2200, which would limit a legal protection for elementary and secondary teachers from laws governing obscene materials. College and university instructors and professors would retain the protection.

Supporters of the bill said there is potential harm to minors in being exposed to obscenity or pornography in novels, plays, books and films.

“The practical effect of this defense is that materials that would be illegal if sold at a porn shop may be legal if displayed to a kindergarten class,” said Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, who sought the legislation.

This has, to my knowledge, never happened in Kansas.

This legislation is a colossal waste of time. People are going to get the books they want to read one way or another. And the books specifically mentioned were at worst mildly controversial:

Some of the books the group [Citizens for Literary Standards in Schools] has complained about include “Black Boy,” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” “Song of Solomon” and “Secret Life of Bees.”

Kinzer, however, said the bill’s intent goes beyond a lone group of angry parents in a single district.

Stussie, the LHS teacher, said many times the books criticized as obscene by some groups were written by minority authors.

She said such books were important in giving nonminorities a “broad spectrum of cultural perspectives,” and that her classes incorporated some of the books that often draw complaints.

Much as I detest Ms Stussie’s lame excuse — which is a form of the lamer “at least they were exposed to it”, the single worst excuse for introducing things into the classroom of questionable educational value but immense “social justice” value (that is, very little of any relevance) — we pay her to make that decision, and not Lance Kinzer.

That’s the second time in a month that Rep. Kinzer has violated the conservative principle of letting local communities choose their own governance. I’m glad that every last bit of government waste has been cleaned up, every last unnecessary tax or program has been eliminated, and that state infrastructure is in perfect condition, or else Lance Kinzer wouldn’t have time to do things other than mind his own damned business.

Unfortunately, under the new state party leadership, we can expect more of the same.

[inherited from: Dr Paul.]

In my last post on the marginalization of boys in public schools, Katie (herself a Wichita Eagle employee) left this comment, which I excerpt for you here:

The best explanation for my underachieving generation that I could ever find was that through all of elementary school, teachers slathered on the “you can be anything you want to be! you have infinite potential! you don’t have to know what you want to be when you grow up right now, but someday you’ll be awesome!” self-esteem schpiel nice and thick. But I don’t have any memory whatsoever of any teacher ever giving us a hint at how to accomplish the vague goals that we were assured we’d one day develop. I don’t think I came up with a serious goal for myself, by myself until I was 22. It took until my senior year of college before a teacher finally sat me down and made me actually think about what I was going to do with my life.

We don’t have public schools so that kids can all be taught to pass state-mandated exams. We have public schools so that kids can be taught how to function in society. Except that they don’t have much time for that anymore.

And here are the results of that program of self-esteem boosting:

NEW YORK - Today’s college students are more narcissistic and self-centered than their predecessors, according to a comprehensive new study by five psychologists who worry that the trend could be harmful to personal relationships and American society.

“We need to stop endlessly repeating ‘You’re special’ and having children repeat that back,” said the study’s lead author, Professor Jean Twenge of San Diego State University. “Kids are self-centered enough already.”

Twenge and her colleagues, in findings to be presented at a workshop Tuesday in San Diego on the generation gap, examined the responses of 16,475 college students nationwide who completed an evaluation called the Narcissistic Personality Inventory between 1982 and 2006.

The standardized inventory, known as the NPI, asks for responses to such statements as “If I ruled the world, it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person” and “I can live my life any way I want to.”

The researchers describe their study as the largest ever of its type and say students’ NPI scores have risen steadily since the current test was introduced in 1982. By 2006, they said, two-thirds of the students had above-average scores, 30 percent more than in 1982.

Narcissism can have benefits, said study co-author W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia, suggesting it could be useful in meeting new people “or auditioning on ‘American Idol.’”

“Unfortunately, narcissism can also have very negative consequences for society, including the breakdown of close relationships with others,” he said.

The study asserts that narcissists “are more likely to have romantic relationships that are short-lived, at risk for infidelity, lack emotional warmth, and to exhibit game-playing, dishonesty, and over-controlling and violent behaviors…” [snip]

Kari Dalane, a University of Vermont sophomore, says most of her contemporaries are politically active and not overly self-centered.

“People are worried about themselves — but in the sense of where are they’re going to find a place in the world,” she said. “People want to look their best, have a good time, but it doesn’t mean they’re not concerned about the rest of the world.”

Besides, some of the responses on the narcissism test might not be worrisome, Dalane said. “It would be more depressing if people answered, ‘No, I’m not special.’”

As I said, the angle in my original post was the marginalization of boys in public schools. Although Katie is clearly not a boy, she has hit on something. The public educational experience has not left young people prepared to function in society. The boutique multiculturalists (which include most leftists, what I call the “racial pressure groups”, “Second Wave” feminists, and also the “Christian right”, which lately is indistinguishable from the preceding groups) will argue that it is society itself that is deficient and needs to be rebuilt (in their image, of course). I say there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our society. As with any collection of people so large, there are problems — even major problems requiring complex solutions. I maintain that the structure for a successful society is there, and that the answer is that our children should be taught a certain common set of core fundamental skills — not quite the “three R’s” but something similar; the key is that the set is broadly applicable and deep — along with a limited array of elective topics as students get older.

Social skills are a key component of that; a student who has been puffed up without justification all of his or her life will not be able to deal with the inevitable setbacks in life, nor will he or she be able to construct a logical argument and defend it against another logical argument rationally. True confidence and self-esteem come from competing and winning*, and it is this at which we have become deficient. When these common skills are taught, kids entering the “real world” will have some expectation of what they will encounter — and quietly become more confident (and justifiably so). They will not need puffery from people they may one day eclipse in accomplishment.

Boys are, of course, more susceptible to this puffery — and the resulting over-confidence and narcissism — than are girls. And we see from the study above, assuming it was done properly, that things that hurt boys also hurt girls — who will want relationships with those dysfunctional boys someday.

I’m afraid we’re setting ourselves up for a fall in America: when we get old, and this dysfunctional generation takes the reins — and we ask them to bear the weight of our impossible socialized retirement (and possibly health-care) schemes — that they’ll want out. What they leave will be fundamentally different — and probably worse — than what we left them. We have only ourselves to blame.

A disturbed fellow in Rolla, MO decided to go out for a little sugar rush:

ROLLA, Mo. - A distraught graduate student claiming to have a bomb and anthrax sparked a scare early Tuesday that shut down the University of Missouri-Rolla, officials said, but the threat turned out to be a hoax.

Preliminary tests on a white, powdery substance found on the student, whose name was not released, showed it was powdered sugar, said Lt. Col. David Boyle of the Missouri National Guard. Authorities said the student could face charges.

“Thankfully this is a false alarm,” said Chancellor John Carney III… [snip]

The man’s identity and nationality were not released, although school spokesman Lance Feyh said he was an international student. The man, who was described by Jenks as depressed, was decontaminated and taken to a hospital. He was being held at the Rolla Police Department.

I’m sure a little dose of jail will clear that depression right up.