Category: ZT & PC

Hmmmmm.

If the “under God” clause in the Pledge of Allegience is not really a substantive assertion of state-sponsored religion, but just relatively meaningless “ceremonial Deism,” then why are its supporters so upset about the Ninth Circuit Court ruling?

If people feel so passionate about the text being included, doesn’t that justify people feeling passionately about it being excluded?

Lileks has a typically marvelous article about (among other things) some materials that Gnat’s pre-school class made available to parents to help them “explain” what all this “war” stuff is about.

The materials basically say, “Peace is always the answer! Trust the UN!” Lileks offers a nice dissection of some of the more glaringly silly statements included, but he left out one section worth noting:

Ask your child to imagine the combined power of people all over the world, living peace, demanding it from their governments, and seeking smart but peaceful ways to deal conflict. Share the story below of the Danish resistance movement from the wonderful book, “A Force More Powerful,” by Peter Ackerman and Jack DuVall.
During World War II, the people of Denmark decided to use their brains instead of violence to defy the Nazi’s. The Danes worked together to devise a strategy that defied the Germans who intended to kill the Jewish people of Denmark. How did they do it? By standing strong and asserting their power peacefully: they had mass strikes and protests, they created a secret system for saving the lives of Jewish citizens, they refused to honor curfews, they had students refuse to speak German in language classes, and they even had Danish songfests throughout the nation to show strength and unity.
Through the combination of all of these acts of resistance, the power and unity of the Danes pushed back the Nazi’s. By the time October 1st, 1943, rolled around — the date the Nazi’s ordered the arrest of 7000 Jews — a system was firmly in place for saving them. Danish organizations throughout the country sheltered Jewish families and shuttled them to the coast, where fishing boats helped them escape to freedom. As a result, close to 6600 of 7000 people, whose lives were marked for death, were saved. This happened without the use of violence.

Too bad about the 400 who weren’t saved. Perhaps a few more Danish songfests would have done the trick.

Of course, you might ask what stopped the Nazis from simply marching in a few SS divisions and simply killing anyone who wasn’t cooperating, Jewish or not? Might it have been … well, ah, violence that was being offered up in resistance to the Nazis in Russia and Italy, in the air from Britain, and by partisans in the Balkans, in Norway, in France, and, yes, even in Denmark?

Perish the thought! After all, we all know that peace is always the answer, and that if we’d just tried to address the “root causes” behind Axis aggression, all that nasty war stuff could have been avoided.

Right?

The messenger is not the message, and just because a bunch of bigots want to take a principled stand by your side doesn’t necesarily mean that your position is wrong.

But it should probably make you think twice about it.

(via Doyce)

State and federal government entities are getting more power to order web sites be blocked (because they carry kiddie porn, for example).

But a surprising number of web hosts map out multiple domains to the same IP address, meaning that blocking one blocks them all, according to a new Harvard study.

Edelman’s study says the practice of Web sites sharing IP addresses is so commonplace that blocking raises free-speech problems. His data show, for instance, that Yahoo hosts 74,000 Web sites at one address; Tucows.com uses one address for 68,000 domains; and Namezero.com points 56,000 domains to one address. “More than 85 percent of active domain names are found to share their Web servers with one or more additional domains,” the study says.

In other words, it’s sort of like saying that because someone in a particular town is doing something wrong, the whole town should be quarantined.

Swell.

Okay, I think this is funny. Though not as funny as some of the people who don’t.

(via CrankyChick)

I find it wildly amusing that British MPs are finding their e-mail blocked by content filters put onto their system. Discussion about censorship bills and sexual offenses legislation, among other things, is being censored.

As Mr. Tyler says: “”Blocking filth is one thing, gagging political debate is another. Censoring MPs discussions with their staff, colleagues and constituents is totally unacceptable.”

The system was put into place after MP complaints about pornographic spam.

The sysadmins say there’s no problem, and that all it takes is a phone call from an MP to release a blocked e-mail.

Heh.

I don’t imagine any lessons will sink in here, but it would be nice to think so.

(via BoingBoing)

Here’s a rather depressing tale. Two students submit the same paper in a class, which turns out to have been written by the same “tutor.” The prof flunks both students, natch.

One of the students sucks it up, but the other appeals to the university which, after some weeks deliberation, decides to … discipline the prof.

By failing both students, she may have discriminated against one or the other, they said. So she must regrade the paper that was submitted, presumably as belonging to the student who appealed. The other is just out of luck.

Did I mention this is an education school?

For more cheerful “Ed Biz” news, consider this article, about how professors being lambasted on independent web pages for bias and “political indoctrination” are fighting not by disputing the charges, but by criticizing the web sites as “impeding academic freedom and stifling free speech on campus.” Swell.

Given all the things that folks argue should be gotten rid of, suppressed, censored, kept out of private hands, etc., because of the danger of mayhem ensuing, you’d think that someone would suggest we should ban the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup, and other sports championships, given the inevitable yahoo behavior that ensues.

By contrast, crowds in Oakland set cars ablaze and threw rocks and bottles at passing vehicles after the Raiders’ loss. Police fired tear gas and moved in large waves to disperse crowds.

Guys … it’s a frickin’ game, played by folks that make a hell of a lot more money, even as losers, than I’ll make this year. Let’s keep a little, I don’t know, perspective here.

UPDATE: More info here.

The world can breathe more easily. The reissue of posters for the Beatles Abbey Road album will airbrush out a (gasp) cigarette in Paul’s hand as the Fab Four cross the street.

The 1969 photo has been a poster best-seller since it was shot near Abbey Road studios in North London, where the Fab Four ecorded most of their music.
But companies including US giant Allposters asked for the cigarette to be removed by computer wizardry to make it more politically correct.
Posters and merchandise items have already changed. Even the cover of the Abbey Road CD could be updated when it is re-issued.

Word on when Churchill’s stogie will be airbrushed from historic photos is expected shortly from Winston Smith, spokesperson for the Ministry of Truth.

(via Andrea)

In this corner, I give you Gay Leather Fetishists. In the opposite corner, I give you PETA.

Fight!

“We decided to come to the Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend in our ‘pleather’ [false leather] and ‘animal friendly’ gear so we could show our gay friends that you can have just as sleazy a look without killing any animals,” said Dan Mathews, a homosexual PETA campaign coordinator outfitted in “pleather” from head to toe.

(via InstaPundit)

So, last summer, folks got up in arms because the New York State Regents exams were bowdlerizing, censoring, altering, and otherwise messing around with the literature excerpts they included in the test.

As a result, they promised vigorously to never do so again, or, if they did, to at least indicate through elipses (…) where they were cutting material, and with [brackets] where paraphrases were taking place.

Sort of like we learned in English class.

Problem is, they’re still doing it.

In new guidelines, the state promised complete paragraphs with no deletions, but an excerpt from Kafka (on the importance of literature) changes his words and removes the middle of a paragraph without using ellipses, in the process deleting mentions of God and suicide.
The new state guidelines promised not to sanitize, but a passage on people’s conception of time from Aldous Huxley (a product of England’s colonial era) deletes the paragraphs on how unpunctual “the Oriental” is.

They also failed to note author names, as they had promised to, and messed up a passage on the Influenza Epidemic of 1918 such that it plausibly has multiple answers that are correct — though the state still thinks that only one of them is “clearly” correct.

The state denies there’s anything wrong with what they did, by the way, arguing that “sensitive” material was cut for length, that unmarked cuts took place in passages marked as “adapted,” and a section that quoted multiple writers was mushed into a single narrative because it would have been too confusing.

Riiiiiiight.

And these are the folks who are deciding whether the students are academically strong enough to pass.

While in this side of the Atlantic, US schools are getting kids expelled or suspended for pointing their fingers, gun-like, at other kids, over in the UK, detention has been banned in hundreds of schools. Why?

The move is in response to a lawsuit filed by a 15-year-old girl who claims the detention she received while a pupil at Speyside High School in Aberlour, Banffshire, seriously disrupted her education and violated her human rights.
Freya Macdonald launched legal action against Moray council, claiming that her punishments were in contravention of Article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which states it is illegal to detain children in an educational establishment against their will without a court order. Her lawyers have also cited Article 2 of the ECHR, which ensures the right of every child to an education, and Article 3, which protects children from degrading treatment.

Next up: suits claiming that failing grades are “degrading treatment” …

Through an amazing coincidence, a survey published in the same source indicates that a third of British teachers indicate they’ll leave the profession by 2008. The Education Minister thinks that’s a good thing, since he infers that two-thirds of teachers are happy with their jobs.

So if Boulder Valley Schools allows at Monarch High a gay/straight alliance club and a multicultural club and an Amnesty International club, why does it forbid a Bible club?

Well, BVS points out, disctrict policy says clubs are allowed only if there is a direct relationship to the school’s classes.

The gay/straight club, for example, ties into health classes. The multicultural club ties into diversity classes.

The application for the Bible club noted that it would tie into classes at the school that address the Bible and religion, including a literature class on the Old Testament.

Well … um … er … request denied anyway.

Besides, the district notes, they like to have teachers be involved in school clubs, in a supervisory/advisory role — and having a teacher involved with a Bible club would be against school policy that that spiritual paths of students should be defined by parents, not staff.

Yeah. Right.

We’ll see what a courts say.

(via JillMatrix)

With the economy “ailing,” the US facing terrorist threats and critical decisions on security versus liberty, and an impending war in Iraq (and beyond), what sorts of bills can you expect to see in the 108th Congress?

Why yet another try at a anti-flag-burning amendment.

The Congress shall have the power to prohibit the physical desecration of the Flag of the United States.

Yup. The greatest danger we face — the one that demands we actually amend the Constitution — is protesters in the US burning the flag. (Can’t do anything about those folks elsewhere doing it, I suppose, except bomb ’em.)

Volokh has a fine LA Times op-ed he wrote demonstrating why this is a bad idea.

To which I’ll add that the Republic has withstood any number of threats, up to and including Civil War, and there has not been a perceived need to actually amend the First Amendment. Are things so dire now, are the internal enemies of the state so great, the feelings of our American public so fragile, that we really need to go through with this sort of thing?

Never mind the dangers of giving Congress carte blanche to define what constitutes the flag, or what constitutes “physical desecration.” Would publishing a political cartoon that has the US flag associated with a dubious activity be considered physical desecration? Would people burning pieces of paper with the letters “USA” in red, white, and blue be subject to fine and/or imprisonment?

Pardon me, while I go off into the corner to mutter annoyedly.

A gym teacher claims that the other middle school girls were “uncomfortable” with her being in gym class because Ashly said she was a lesbian. So, instead, Ashly got to sit in the principal’s office during gym time.

Oh, yeah, not surprisingly, the district is getting the snot sued out of them. And righteously, too, I might add.

(via JillMatrix)

An interesting bit from someone’s experience in mandatory diversity training, wherein a woman’s claiming she had never been oppressed became grounds for oppression itself.

Yeesh.

(via InstaPundit)