Education

Feminism kills three more, when will the carnage end?

Rohit — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:51:00 GMT

In Atlanta today, modern American feminism killed three people. A judge in the Fulton County Courthouse, a court reporter, and a sheriff's deputy were shot to death in the courthouse by a man who was on trial for rape.

Now the question is, how does a man who is on trial and ostensibly under control by law enforcement get access to a firearm? Well this is where modern feminism steps in to take the blame. The Associated Press does not bring this to light, I only noticed it by carefully reading the story, here is how the AP characterizes the incident:

“The suspect got the gun by overpowering a sheriff's deputy while he was being escorted within the courthouse”

Now, notice that the gender of the deputy in question is not clearly stated (in fact, due to the poor grammar of the writer, one would guess the deputy was male). Later in teh article, “ Details are still being sorted out; the injured deputy was under sedation, he said. Doctors had said she was wounded in the head. “ SHE. Let's all try to guess which sheriff's deputy this sick criminal chose to “overpower” in order to arm himself. Could it be the one with the ponytail and the “Grrrl power” panties? I think so. No matter what we want to say about gender equality, it is unescapable that the one sheriff's deputy who was targeted (successfully) by this sick man was the one he knew he would have no trouble “overpowering.” Now, who wants to be next in line to let woman fight in combat situations?

Illegal Immigration. Finally someone touches the topic with a ten-foot pole

Rohit — Mon, 18 Oct 2004 01:14:00 GMT

Today CNN broadcast one of the best shows it has ever done. Immigration is the great ignored problem of our day. In three presidential debates, the question came up once. In the third debate moderator Bob Schieffer said that it was the single most requested question, yet somehow we only get 1 question on the topic. This is yet another sign of how the waves of illegal immigrants from Mexico and the rest of Latin America are undermining our democracy and our nation. With both major political parties pandering to the burgeoning Latino plurality in this country, we are left with few solutions and no national discussion of the issue. The GOP has a plan to bring millions of so called "temporary workers" into the mainstream, while the Democrats have countered with a plan for even greater amnesty. Neither party has brought up the issue of deportation or any real solutions that would stem the tide of illegal immigration. When illegals who may one day vote can hold our political system hostage like this, the very foundation of democracy must come into question.

We have all heard the statistics that describe how Latinos are on their way to majority status in our country. Indeed in parts of the West and the Southwest, they already are. We have a vast and growing segment of the population that does not speak english, does not participate in our national culture, and in many cases doesn't even pay income taxes. Yet they are schooled in schools paid for by taxpayers, recieve emergency healthcare provided by taxpayers, and have all kinds of bilingual services provided to them. I don't know what the solution is for any of this-although I certainly have suggestions-but the bigger problem is that this is not an issue in our national conversation. Kudos to CNN for shedding light on the topic in an election year. We need more of this.

Welcome to the TEAM!

Rohit — Thu, 14 Oct 2004 04:02:00 GMT

This wins the Team Command award, for best comment ever. 'nuff said.

# re: There are worse things than being an asshole. Just ask Kobe Bryant. 10/12/2004 12:13 AM Reality

This bitch is scum of the earth. If Kobe did rape her then she is just letting him get away with it. If he did it and does it again then it is all her fault, because she choes to get paid. If the trial was too stressful her lawsuit is going to make her want to kill herself again. Everything that wouldn't not have been admitted in original court is now fair game. Everybody she slept with, the other DNA in her undies, the bragging about the sex, and more will all come out in the lawsuit.
If he didnt do it then she is still scum of the earth, for doing her part to destroy race relations in America. Also for trying to destroy a man and his family.
To Hell Katie Faber that horrible horrible slut bitch cunt whore.
God Bless Americe

Jack and Bobby on the WB

Rohit — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 05:27:00 GMT

This is unbelievable. I am watching this new WB series called “Jack and Bobby”, and apparently these two guys named Jack and Bobby are being raised by a single mother to be president. This is typical of the way that our society has fallen apart. The Kennedy's without Joe! Raised by a single mother! (They might as well have called this Roger and Bill. One will turn out to be a lousy, vain, manipulative man who is unable to control his desires-and the other will just be a loser drug addict) Also it looks like when one of these kids becomes president in the future, his VP is, of course, a woman!

So, now we have a series about how the “best president of this century” will be raised by a single mom, and have a female vice president. Yeah, I seem to remember how useless Jack and Bobby Kennedy's dad was when it came to raising them... what was his name? I cant even remember it. Joe? was that it? I guess that guy had nothing to do with raising up one of the most influential families in the 20th century. Must have been all RoseMarie ( I actually don't remember what her name was).

Well if this atrocity of a television show makes it, I don't know what to say. I just hope none of the kids raised on this shit actually becomes president. Hey, maybe that's a good reason to change the constitution to allow foreign born people to become president. This current generation and probably all after it will be too screwed up to rule the most powerful nation on earth-we need to import people who haven't been bathed in this shit: self-esteem, equality of results, affirmative action, and celebration of mediocrity that permeates the garbage that we call education and culture.

Flaws in the reporting of economic statistics

Rohit — Mon, 13 Sep 2004 05:19:00 GMT

The New York Times finally confronts one of the most insidious forms of bias in the major news media today-(reg req'd)- the shockingly flawed reporting of economic statistics. Basic economics-along with science and math- is one of the most neglected areas of education today. This has led to shameful ignorance of all of these subjects on the part of most Americans-thus they take their lead from the stories they read in the press (who unfortunately, as journalism and english majors, also shunned anything to do with numbers as they were educated). So you have a case of a land of the blind where the one-eyed man truly is king.

Two economists at the American Enterprise Institute (a conservative think-tank) studied the way that economic statistics, such as unemployment, economic growth, durable goods orders, etc. are reported in the media. They found a statistically significant bias against republican presidents in the reporting of economic news.

One example that the NYT uses is that during the Clinton administration unemployment averaged 5.2%, only 0.3% lower than it has averaged during the Bush administration-yet the headlines were 44% positive for Clinton, yet only 23% of Bush's were.

What really interests me about this article though, is that they quote a former professor of mine as their economics expert.

“Christopher D. Carroll, an economist at Johns Hopkins University who served on Mr. Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, said the paper by Mr. Hassett and Mr. Lott was "the first serious statistical attempt to look at the question that I've seen."”

They go on further to quote Prof. Carroll- and he bashes the survey. Of course, beyond saying that he served on Clinton's CEA they do not disclose any of Prof. Carroll's other affiliations (a note, the council of economic advisers is generally apolitical, arch-liberal Paul Krugman served on Reagan's CEA). Chris Carroll worked for the Al Gore campaign, doing analyses of the voting results during the Florida recount! The NYT does not disclose Prof. Carroll's liberalism, even though they go to pains to describe the AEI researchers as “right-wing hacks”

So basically, the point is that biased economic reporting probably does more damage than your typical left-leaning major news coverage. This is because poor coverage of news events is more easily identified than poor coverage of more esoteric economic news (I am assuming that the pathetic state of math and science education in our country has a lot to do with this).

Rock Paper Saddam

Rohit — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 00:05:00 GMT

Just imagine how bad it would be if the guy could get a real American lawyer. I wonder why the ACLU hasn't stepped in to provide someone; I guess they are too busy preventing poor children from getting a high-quality education.

Econo-nerd smackdown- How do we tell how many people are employed?

Rohit — Sat, 03 Apr 2004 01:08:00 GMT

The government agency in charge of the widely followed and reported unemployment statistics is called the Bureau of Labor Statistics, it is part of the Department of Labor. They have a great website which houses tons of data. In order to determine the employment situation in this country they perform two surveys. One is called the household survey and the other is called the establishment or payroll survey. The difference between the two is pretty simple, in the household survey statisticians at the BLS call up a sample of US households and ask them about their employment status. In the payroll survey, they call up a sample of “established” businesses and ask them how many people they employ.

Usually these two measures are pretty close. But since last june they have diverged. Since the 3rd quarter of 2003, the household survey has returned a brighter employment situation than the establishment survey. Economists have battled back and forth on the cause of this divergence, and the Democrats have seized on it as a political issue. Optimists have held that the payroll survey methodology caused it to provide an incorrectly dark employment picture. They claimed that the establishment survey was not adequately measuring job growth in small and new businesses-which are generally the companies that lead the way in hiring. The optimists were right.

Today in its employment situation release for March, the BLS continued its trend of revising previous establishment job growth readings upward. Last month the preliminary establishment release was a 21,000 job increase-now the BLS says that it was really an increase of 46,000 jobs-and that is still a preliminary number which will probably be revised upward again! The previous number for jobs created in the first 2 months of this year was 118,000. Today the BLS revised that number upward to 205,000! All of these establishment survey revisions have been upward. Given that information, its pretty clear that those who pointed out the flaws of the establishment survey were right. Of course the household survey has shown a net job loss of 178,000 jobs over this same period. The moral is that both surveys should be considered before forming an opinion on the employment situation. This is why the BLS actually does both surveys. If one survey or the other was always incorrect and highly unreliable-it would be scrapped. In this case, the household survey has led the payroll survey.

Check out this months employment release here. You can compare this month's revisions to last month's prelim numbers here.

One note about the 513,000 net new jobs created in the first quarter. 13,000 of them were not “organic” growth, they were the result of striking grocery workers coming back to work. So the “real” number should be considered to be an even 500,000.

I'll put a real post real soon...I promise.

Rohit — Wed, 03 Mar 2004 00:19:00 GMT

Please excuse Jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the Sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it Monday, we thought it was Sunday.

My Old Enemy....

Rohit — Thu, 26 Feb 2004 19:38:00 GMT

I don't want to turn this into a LiveJournal entry but, I've eaten General Tso's Chicken for lunch everyday this week. I don't think this is healthy. But it tastes so damn good and conforms to a “low carb lifestyle.” So of course, like so many bad comedians out there I have begun to wonder who General Tso was. Thankfully, Mike Browning of the Washington Post already did the research.

“Who was he?

General Tso Tsungtang, or as his name is spelled in modern Pinyin, Zuo Zongtang, was born on Nov. 10, 1812, and died on Sept. 5, 1885. He was a frighteningly gifted military leader during the waning of the Qing dynasty, a figure perhaps the Chinese equivalent of the American Civil War commander William Tecumseh Sherman. He served with brilliant distinction during China's greatest civil war, the 14-year-long Taiping Rebellion, which claimed millions of lives.

Tso was utterly ruthless. He smashed the Taiping rebels in four provinces, put down an unrelated revolt called the Nian Rebellion, then marched west and reconquered Chinese Turkestan from Muslim rebels

As a young man Tso flunked the official court exams three times, a terrible disgrace. He returned home, married and devoted himself to practical studies, like agriculture and geography. He took up silkworm farming and tea farming and chose a gentle sobriquet, calling himself "The Husbandman of the River Hsiang." Like Sherman, stuck teaching at a military academy in Louisiana on the eve of the Civil War, he seemed washed up.

He was 38 when the Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850. For the rest of his life, Tso would wield the sword, becoming one of the most remarkably successful military commanders in Chinese history.

What a badass. I am going to go eat more of his chicken now.

My Dear Shahms...

Rohit — Fri, 06 Feb 2004 00:48:00 GMT

To further your education, I heartily recommend the following titles, all available at amazon.com (how did a company that never earned a profit until this last year stay around for 6+ years? Indeed this was financed through a thing called invested capital): The use of Knowledge in Society by Frederich Hayek, Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, The Commanding Heights by Dan Yergin, and finally any book written by Douglass North. I know its a lot of work, but spending an hour Googling “supply-side economics” in between bong hits won't teach you shit about anything, and certainly not about the roots of human freedom.

Now to dignify some of you less baseless and ignorant statements. As far as the “underwear gnome” issue, the fact is that everyone invests money-even if wealth people stick their money in a bank, what do you think the bank does with that money? The bank has to pay its depositors a fixed (if low) rate of return, and bank shareholders generally expect profits and dividends in exchange for the use of their capital, therefore the bank, acting as a financial intermediary will invest that deposited money in a loan. Sometimes this is a house loan, sometimes it is a capital equipment loan. Either way, the bank invests that money back into the economy, so like “magic”, even though the bank depositor is risk averse, the bank takes on a moderate amount of risk in exchange for that capital.

Furthermore, of course you need capital for growth, the question is where will it come from? Will it be internally generated capital, profits in other words, or will it be capital borrowed from a bank, or maybe a company will sell stock to raise capital, because without capital a company cannot expand its production, sales, or distribution capacity. Taxes confiscate capital and transfer it to the federal government, leaving less for investment. Supply-side economists generally believe that the private sector responding to price signals is a more efficient allocator of capital than a federal government responding to political signals (think about the level of pork barrell spending at all levels of government, the allocation is determined by the politcal clout of various Congresspeople, not price).

So in short, fewer rolling papers, more academic papers, and you will be on your way to being a good capitalist.