One of the great things about being a conservative is that you get to speak curmudgeonly but undeniable truths such as...

...young people are so frickin stupid.

"The Day of Rage....

...the day of non-violent rage."

This is funny.



While looking at this, the following irony occurred to me. Liberals' favorite slam against activist popular conservativism is that it is angry, e.g.,  the Tea Party is angry. During the '80s, Hollywood was atwitter with the phenomenon of the "angry white man."  But this claim isn't true.  Conservatives when they get activist tend to be respectful of other people's stuff.  They don't break things. They pick up their litter, etc.

On the other hand, activist popular liberalism actually is angry.  They aren't shy about labeling their protests "the day of rage."  They do break things, as has happened repeatedly at various World Trade meetings, e.g., "the Battle of Seattle."  And it's not just the wacky anarchists; union protesters on Madison recently did $7.5 million worth of property damage.

Heck, the Tea Party cleaned up the mess left by union protesters in Madison.

Just chalk it up to Undeniable Truth of Life #7 - "if they are accusing you of doing something you ain't doing, you can bet they're doing it."

Video via Mark Shea.

Something Orwell probably never said, but he should have - 

According to this site:

"In a time/state of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act” is a statement often attributed to author George Orwell (1903-1950). The saying doesn’t appear in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1948), his essay “Politics and the English Language” (1946), or any other of Orwell’s writings. The saying has been cited in print since at least 1984 (when it was attributed to George Orwell).


A similar saying was used by author and presidential candidate Ron Paul in 2008—“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

Common Sense and the Law.

Expert testimony was not needed to determine the value of the few proper services Mr. Posey performed. All the facts were before the jury, and it generously allowed him to keep over $ 1,000. (See fn. 4, ante.) "The correct rule on the necessity of expert testimony has been summarized by Bob Dylan: 'You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.' n6 The California courts, although in harmony, express the rule somewhat less colorfully and hold expert testimony is not required where a question is 'resolvable by common knowledge'. [Citations omitted.]" (Jorgensen v. Beach ' N' Bay Realty, Inc. (1981) 125 Cal.App.3d 155, 163 [177 Cal.Rptr. 882].)


FOOTNOTES

n6 In a footnote at this point, the court cites: "Bob Dylan, 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' from Bringing it All Back Home."

Ball v. Posey, 176 Cal. App. 3d 1209, 1215 (Cal. App. 1st Dist. 1986)

Too true

Want to really learn something? 

Then teach it.

As Apologetics 315 explains:

The Problem: You think you know the subject. Your study it. You are familiar with it. You are immersed in it. But only when you attempt to teach the subject will you realize where you fall short. Everything changes when it is time to teach what you think you know. The fact is that deeper learning requires elements of teaching what you are learning.




The Tools: The teaching element of learning is not limited to the formal instruction of others, as a narrow use of the word teaching may suggest. Instead, the teaching element entails an intentional internalization and re-presentation of your subject. Here are a few ways that you can learn by teaching:

1. Writing about your subject causes you to put what you have internalized into your own words. It forces you to make your ideas clear. It is intentional, specific, and displays in black and white what you know.

2.  Talking about your subject, formally or informally, allows you to interact with the ideas in a way that forces you to verbalize what you know.

3.  Explaining your subject to others allows you to adapt your material so that it can be understood by people at different levels of understanding. Your focus is to bring others to a fuller understanding; starting simply and going deeper.

4.  Rephrasing the ideas within your subject is crucial. Seek to own the idea for yourself by putting it into your own words, using your own illustrations, and presenting it from a fresh perspective.

5.  Summarizing by formulating concise verbal summaries of certain points allows your subject to be distilled in its simplest and purest form in your mind.

6.  Reviewing books on your subject is useful in extracting the key ideas from authors. This forces you to summarize and rephrase the ideas of others, which helps make them your own.

7.  Formal Teaching is the truest test. This may begin with a few individuals or a small group, and then grow to something more substantial - but perhaps here is where you can learn the most. Do those listening grasp what you are saying? Are your ideas bringing clarity - or confusion? The real-time feedback and "post-mortem" feedback from teaching opportunities can be the most useful means of learning.

The Benefits: By incorporating these elements of teaching, you provide yourself with the opportunity to learn more deeply. All of these tools will help you make the subject your own - in a way that is simply not possible otherwise.

One of those "D'oh *Slap Head* Moments"

I've always thought it was a weird coincidence that the price for a gallon of gas have always been close to that of a pack of cigarettes.   Right now, for example, a gallon of gas is approaching $4 per gallon and a pack of cigarettes, I understand, is around $4 a pack.  Back when I started driving, they were both around 70 cents, as I recall.

This morning in Madera Superior Court, the Court Reporter, Bailiff and I were recollecting how low gas prices were back in the early '70s.  The bailiff remembered gas prices as low as 17 cents a gallon.  I pointed out that when I started driving, gas prices had skyrocketed to the unheard of price of 70 cents a gallon. (For our younger readers, this is what old folks talk about when they get together.)  I then pointed out the strange correlation between gas and cigarettes.

Without meeting a beat the bailiff said, "that's because most of the price in cigarettes and gas is in taxes."

*Silence*

*Reflection*

I slapped my head and made a groaning noise.  "D'oh!"

I looked at the Court Reporter and asked, "Did you know that?"

It's like a few weeks ago when I talked to a client who is involved in California water issues.  I pointed out that we must be doing well because the San Luis Obispo Reservoir - a giant Central Valley water reservoir this side of the Coastal Range - is filling up.  He looked at me and said, "You know that the SLO Reservoir is filled up by water pumped into it, not by natural rivers, right?"

Uhmmm...no, not till right then, but it sure made sense after it was pointed out.

It seems that when the SLO Reservoir has been low recently, that has everything to do with Court Orders blocking the pumping of water in order to protect the Delta smelt and nothing to do with California being in a drought.

D'oh!

At least, I know that I'm not the only one who monitors how California's water supply is doing based upon how low the water level at the SLO Reservoir seems to be.

Alibis and Achievement

"There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day: we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life."

--- Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind

Thought of the Day

"I suppose that if a fish were thoughtfully to consider the matter, she might have a hard time determining the differences we treasure between Al Gore and a sperm whale. Both of them are large and one of them is streamlined."

David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions

Justice, Mushrooms and "Manure in the Dark"

We do not subscribe to the obscurantist notion that justice, like wild mushrooms, thrives on manure in the dark. As Presiding Justice Gilbert observed, "Just as a theater critic must see the play before writing a review, judges must carefully consider the evidence before deciding a case. The lifeblood of our judicial institutions depends upon judges rendering decisions that are the product of a reasoned and objective view of the law and the facts." (Rose v. Superior Court (2000) 81 Cal. App. 4th 564, 572 [96 Cal. Rptr. 2d 843].)

Titmas v. Superior Court, 87 Cal. App. 4th 738, 742 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 2001)

I've got nothing really profound or original to say here, except that I thought this was a nice, and rare, turn of phrase in a judicial decision.

Well, except maybe that I often feel that I've gotten the "mushroom treatment" - i.e., kept in the dark and had manure shovelled at me.

If someone is accusing you of something you are not doing, then you can bet they're doing it.

As Vox Day points out, we now know why the left wing has been ventilating about the "vast right wing conspiracy.

From Politico:

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

As Vox Day points out:

So, it seems journalism has its own little group of would-be Bilderbergers. What a surprise! One thing I've noticed is that you can usually tell what a left-winger is doing in secret by paying attention to what he accuses the right of doing. And this quote tells you all you need to know about the factual reliability of the liberal media:

"Defending the off-the-record rule, Klein said that “candor is essential and can only be guaranteed by keeping these conversations private.”"

In other words, if a left-leaning blogger, political reporter, magazine writer, policy wonk or academic is communicating openly in public, candor is inessential and cannot be guaranteed. In short, you should assume they're probably lying.

Isn't remarkable how long this has gone without being covered by our "watchdog media"?

If only gays could marry....

...uhm... never mind.

Sean P. Daily reports:

Craig Faunch and Ian Wathey were one of the first homosexual couples in the country to be officially approved as foster parents. They looked after 18 children in only 15 months. With no previous convictions, they came across as respectable men who simply wanted to help boys with a variety of problems.

In reality, they were paedophiles, who repeatedly abused the children in their care. Between them, the couple abused four boys aged between eight and 14.

According to the story, social workers knew about it but did nothing for fear of being branded "homophobic." Nice.

Sean's post title is an homage to Mark Shea's "Two phases of history: First, what could it hurt? Second, how were we supposed to know?

(Apologies to Sean's commenter "Trubador".)

In the merry land of whatever-you-say-three-times-is-true, you can fall from the top of a skyscraper and land on your feet and pretty unicorns eat rainbows and poop butterflies....

...you can sensibly have a news article report that a "man" became a "woman" "but kept his vagina."

Here is the full context:

An Oregon man who used to be a woman says he is pregnant with a baby girl.

Thomas Beatie's first-person story appears in a recent issue of The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based newsmagazine for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgendered people.

According to the story, Thomas was born a woman but decided to become a transgender male and legally changed his sex to male. He had his breasts surgically removed and started bimonthly testosterone injections, but kept his vagina.

Now identifying as male, Thomas legally married Nancy, the story says. The pair wanted a biological baby but Nancy was unable to carry a child. So they decided Thomas would.

"How does it feel to be a pregnant man?" Thomas writes in the article. "Incredible. Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant. To Nancy, I am her husband carrying our child . . . I will be my daughter's father, and Nancy will be her mother. We will be a family."

Before getting pregnant he stopped injecting testosterone, and his body "regulated itself after about four months," he writes in The Advocate.

In the real world, however, a member of the human species that can get pregnant is called a "woman."

Such a person is called a "woman" even if when that person is no longer able to get pregnant.

Hence, a woman who surgically mutilates herself because of a psychological disorder that makes her want to pass as a man is still gramatically referred to as "her" or "she", notwithstanding how many times she says otherwise.

[Via Mark Shea.]

Update:

Wesley Smith's take on the subject:

They will be a family, but he is not really a man. She is a woman, biologically. That's why she is capable of having a baby. So, the facts are that a woman, who identifies as a man, is having a baby. That's not the same thing at all as a man having a baby. We can redefine all we want, we can say that legally she is a he, but that doesn't change biology. A woman is having a baby and that is not remarkable at all.

Finally, the answer to the question, who really won the sexual revolution?

Answer: Men.

How the pill made women slutty and men slackers and caused women to become workplace drones with a rates of heart attacks that is actually higher than that of men.

Women have been so totally *pwnned*

Apparently, it's all about the "rational economic choice" that less slutty women make in order to raise their economic value and thereby land a mate. Women without a taste for being sluts have had to increase their perceived economic value by increasing their earnings base so that they can support some drop-out man's slacker lifestyle.

Of course, needless to say, the whole thing flips in the other direction if you are a man who is the antithesis of "tall, dark and handsome."

*Sigh*

Once, in a discussion with a lady friend who was known for "sleeping around," I asked her why she had adopted that lifestyle.

Her answer was that she wanted to show men how if feels like to be treated as mere sex objects, like they had treated women.

I said, "Yea, that'll teach 'em."

There are no secrets...

...particularly in the workplace.

One of The 12 Great Truths: give enough people enough time with enough little bits of information and everything is speculated upon and, with enough speculation, the truth eventually gets confirmed. Affairs, sexual orientations, fiduciary breaches, drug addictions...I've seen so many workplace secrets unraveled by staff with a Columbo-like attention to detail.

So, it is probably not surprising that the secret that the tiger in the San Francisco Zoo was kept in more by an "honor system" than by the moats and fences was known to those who worked at the Zoo for 60 years.

Read the post I've linked to for a worthwhile reflection on the idea of "open secrets" and how it is human nature to have "undiscussable" facts that everyone knows and discusses in private but must remain officially unaware.

Very interesting.