Wednesday, February 22, 2006

News Swamp: February 22, 2006

Once again, I’m overwhelmed by recent news, so I offer my commentary in one single post on selected items of interest.

First, the President of Harvard University announced his resignation yesterday. He is bowing to pressure over comments he made relegating the disparate under-representation of women in math and science courses of study to notable differences in the nature of men and women. He merely told the obvious truth. There are women who are gifted in math and science. They are under-represented because there are simply much more men who are gifted in math and science. The reason is because men tend to be builders where women tend to be crafters. This is why men tend to be stronger and women tend to have greater dexterity. Men tend to by under-represented in crafts. We just don’t complain about it. My argument is that the President of Harvard is leaving because he said what we all know to be true: that men and women are different. It makes me wonder what they aim to teach students at Harvard.

The homosexual movement has seen a few small items in the news lately. It’s just overshadowed by other things. First, students at high schools across the US are participating in a “Day of Truth” to counter the homosexual “Day of Silence”. Second, the homosexuals retaliate by protesting at a Christian conference on homosexuality in St. Louis. In an international twist, Russia’s first Homosexual parade is loudly protested by Russian Muslims. (If the “enemy of my enemy is my friend,” then which one is which in this case?)

There is much about the sale of US ports to the UAE company.:

WorldNetDaily
NewsDay
Reuters
APNews
Miami Herald

I heard the rumor that our real purpose was to sell them New Orleans.

In other terror news, the school paper of the Canadian Victoria University printed a cartoon of Muhammad and Jesus kissing. I suppose we should riot and burn down the Canadian embassy, but I’ll leave that to the children.

One argument against Intelligent Design is that all scientists acknowledge evolution as incontrovertibly true. Well, it’s really that argument that is incontrovertibly false. The list of serious scientists with their signatures on a document stating their dissent from evolution has grown to over 500.

The anti-lifers have a weak advocate in Jimmy Carter’s son, Jack. He said, “I'm pro-choice as far as a woman choosing, but I'm against abortion." That’s as meaningless a statement as John Kerry’s “I voted for the war in Iraq before I voted against it.” (Or was it the other way around? Who cares? It’s meaningless anyway.) The slippery slope that pro-lifers have been warning about is demonstrating itself with frightening accuracy. In Holland, Alderman Marianne van den Anker of the Leefbaar Rotterdam Party is arguing that forcing women to have abortions will prevent gangs of unwanted children. Is it just I, or is the problem not obvious to others? If you kill off unwanted children, then on what principle will a secular society want the children they don’t kill? The problem lies not with the children but with the parents.

Fortunately, in the states the Supremes are looking into revisiting the constitutionality of banning doctors from pulling babies out of their mother’s wombs feet first so they can leave their heads in the birth canal and suck their brains out through a hole made by jabbing a scissors into the back of the babies’ heads. Oh, you may know this as “partial birth abortion.”

My mom took my brother and me to a church in the historically peaceful Anabaptist tradition. She taught us not to empower bullies by reacting they way they wanted us to react. But when, in the first grade, a bully once pursued me anyway, she taught me to stand up to him. When we moved to North Carolina from Ohio, I was given the opportunity to put this into practice. One afternoon, after a day of being hounded by a bully in class, the teacher left the room or a moment. Once again, the bully was at my desk. This time I stood and quickly wrestled him into a headlock. When the teacher returned, she sent him to the office and had me wash my face. She told me she had noticed me trying to ignore the bully all day. This is the way we deal with bullies. My mom would roll over in her grave if I sought to sue him years later. Apparently, this is to be the practice now starting in the UK. Frankly, the world would have more peace if people stood up to bullies more often. It’s the same principle that drives down crime rates in states that allow for concealed weapons.

George Bush has spent some time recently looking at some new energy innovations. Burning oil is fine, but the technology is outdated. Speaking as one trained in physics, there is so much potential out there to do better. Keep your eyes open. I suspect that there is some revolutionary advancements in energy transfer on the horizon.

Liberal Democrats are trying to stop ads providing an apologetic for the war on terror that features troops and their parents. I thought liberals were all about the freedom of speech? You can see these ads here.

Were you expecting me to comment on the verbal whipping that Mary Matalin gave David Gregory on Meet The Press over his poor attitude about Cheney’s hunting accident? *sigh* It’s a news story about the news people. There’s nothing newsworthy there.

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