Monday, August 31, 2015


Women With Troubles - August 2015

Here is a compilation of women with troubles reported in news stories during August 2015. Each name is linked to an Interested-Participant blog entry displaying details.

For a more comprehensive listing, check the Women With Troubles category link.
(AR) Mary Faith McCormick, 33,
teacher - Gets eight years prison for sex with boy, 13,

(DE) Molly Shattuck, 48,
former NFL cheerleader - Sentenced to 48 weekends in jail for rape of boy, 15,

(FL) Amanda Chandler, 40,
police dispatcher - Accused of sex with an 11-year-old boy,

(IA) Mindy Jo Fetters, 23,
neighbor - Gets probation and a fine for child endangerment resulting in injury,

(IN) Terra Moore, 37,
teacher's aide - Charged with having sexual conduct with a student,

(IN) Ashley Ann Turner, 25,
neighbor - Accused of sex with 15-year-old boy,

(MO) Johnna Feazell, 47,
teacher - Guilty of sex crimes involving a female student, 16. Sentencing in November,

(OH) Amanda Basile, 32,
teacher - Pleaded guilty to gross sexual imposition of a student,

(OH) Shannon Pavlansky-Wojtowicz, 31,
teacher - Pleaded guilty to sexual battery, using minors in nude performances, and disseminating material harmful to juveniles,

(OH) Brenda Pratt, 63,
babysitter - Charged in connection with the death of a 10-week-old baby girl,

(OK) Jennifer Caswell, 29,
teacher - Gets 10 years prison for rape of a male student, 15,

(OK) Daresa Deann Poe, 32,
teacher - Gets five years in jail suspended for assault with intent to commit a felony,

(OK) Krystal Williams, 29,
neighbor - Arrested for possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia, children in car,

(PA) Emily Feeney, 40,
counselor and swim coach - Arrested for sexually assaulting a male student, 16,

(PA) Jessica Streeper, 34,
teacher - Gets 9 to 23 months prison for having sex with a 14-year-old male student,

(PA) Melinda A. Trezise, 39,
teacher - Accused of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old male student,

(TN) Shelby Carolann Flores, 23,
neighbor - Accused of statutory rape of a 14-year-old boy,

(TX) Rachell Silva, 40,
teacher's aide - Accused of having an improper relationship with a male student, 16,

(WA) Stephanie McCrea, 36,
teacher - Pleaded guilty to engaging in sex with a 15-year-old student,

(WY) Anna Andersen, 55,
teacher - Sentenced to 8 to 12 years in prison for sexual abuse of a minor.

Thanks to the tipsters.

Alabama Rally for State Succession



(Montgomery, Alabama) This event occurred last Saturday.
If support for the secession of Alabama from the United States can be measured in rally attendance, it's safe to assume Alabama won't be seceding any time soon.

More than 300 people were expected at the Alabama Flaggers Secession Rally, according to AF co-director Freda Mincey-Burton and the event's Facebook page.

On the steps of the Capitol Saturday, attendance peaked at 30 people — including event organizers — and rain showers after the first hour of the event sealed it as a failure. The 5-hour rally ended after about 2 hours.
Definite fail, eh?

Trip to Saratoga

Went on a short vacation to Saratoga Springs NY so . . . I've been away from my computer for several days. I need to thank my co-blogger John Ray for maintaining blog postings during my absence. Thanks, John.

The lure of visiting Saratoga was the chance to see my son and his family.

Frankly, the trip to Saratoga was pure joy.

 Intellectual feebleness at James Madison university


The Viginia university claims to be a research university. The sort of thinking needed for that doesn't always show in their student newspaper. I give a few excerpts below from one article asserting that hate speech causes hate crime.  

The proof of that?  Two people who assaulted an immigrant claimed to be inspired by the words of Donald Trump.

BUT what about the (say) 100 million other people who heard Trump and did not assault anybody?  Doesn't that prove that Trump's speech is wonderfully safe and that hate speech does not cause  hate crime?  If hate speech does not lead to hate crime in 100 million cases, what more evidence do we need to conclude that hate speech does not cause hate crimes?

We do have to look at ALL the evidence, of course.  Not that any Leftist ever does.  Reality is so far inconsistent with  Leftist beliefs that they would become conservatives if they let themselves consider all the evidence.

And what evidence do we have that the men would have behaved differently if they had not heard Trump?  There is none.  It is just a claim.

And how can we base any generalization on one instance?  It's because we can't that we have statistics. If lots of people had gone out and bashed illegals after hearing The Donald the writer  might have a case.  But as it is, one swallow doesn't make a summer.

The writer below, Kevan Hulligan, does go on to scratch through history to find other attacks that have been associated with hate speech but he finds about three in total over a long span of years -- which is, I think, excellent proof that hate speech does NOT cause hate crimes -- the exact opposite of what he asserts.

The kid who wrote the guff below really is a poor thing: A very dim bulb.  And his expensive education has done nothing to remedy that, which is sad


It’s hard to deny that some of the worst aspects of American culture are embodied by Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the Republican primary. His abrasiveness, continuous grandstanding, willingness to insult and denigrate instead of argue and his use of racist rhetoric do enough to show why such a man shouldn’t have a front desk job at the Library of Congress, let alone the Oval Office.

Now the racism that took center stage with his immigration comments earlier this year has resulted in someone being assaulted.

On Aug. 19, two brothers from Boston viciously attacked a 58-year-old homeless Latino man while walking home from a baseball game. They beat him repeatedly with a metal pole and punched him after urinating on him. Their said inspiration for this attack? Donald Trump’s racist comments on immigration.

This entire episode proves what many have been saying for years now: hate speech inevitably leads to people taking that speech and turning it into violent hate crimes.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Sunday, August 30, 2015


Ya gotta laugh:  California nightmare dreaming

They sure believe in having a bet each way below.  The drought will get worse, they say.  And then there will be floods. They may well be right.  But does that have anything to do with global warming?  Seeing that there has been no statistically significant  global warming for 18 years, global warming cannot account for either phenomenon.  Something that doesn't exist doesn't cause anything. What we are seeing is normal California climate oscillations.  It is mostly a dry state with occasional drought-breaking rains.  Always was.  Always will be.  

There were some significant rains recently in fact -- but no mention of them below, of course.  California news from a few weeks ago: "Monsoonal moisture has increased rain events, cloud cover and humidity levels in what is normally a very dry time of year. The active Pacific hurricane season has helped enhance the rain events, leading to flooding for some parts of the state and even record rain amounts."

What clowns the Warmists are!


California's unabated drought (the one that's been going on for four long years) has parched the entire state and led to some frightening consequences (parts of the state are sinking), but the worst is yet to come and "there's no way out," according to climate scientists. Those were their literal words. They presented to regulators and reps from the Governor's Office at the California Climate Change Symposium this week, the Daily Breeze reports, telling them that the drought had been dramatically exacerbated by global warming, and that there's a lot worse in store: less water, more pollution, scarier weather, bigger storms, floods, and fires.

"What we're beginning to understand is that there's no way out," said Susanne Moser, who's described as a leading expert on climate change. "We need transformational change. We don't need more studies as much as we need to communicate the urgency and make solid changes. We need to not debate forever." But as the DB's Sandy Mazza writes, there's little funding at all to handle climate change and its effects, and even less for low-income communities, which are "therefore less prepared than their more affluent counterparts." But even the preparation that's already been done is wildly insufficient: "We're getting over the illusion that we can (fix) this with just a few little changes ... We have to break old habits," says Moser. Here's some of what the scientists are warning about; maybe they'll scare us into breaking some habits:

— An analysis of climate change's effect on the state's drought published in Geophysical Research Letters concluded that climate change made California's "dry season" as much as 20 percent worse. Plus, the combo of hot temperatures and little precipitation are "more likely" to result in a drought, so a warmer climate would probably be a droughtier one, a Stanford researcher explained.

— The heat evaporates more groundwater too, which is depleting underground reserves; those won't refill as easily as a reservoir might, "posing a problem for future drinking-water supplies."

— In addition to droughts, we should also expect excessive water. "We're in the middle of a drought but we're going to be in the middle of a flood, and we're less prepared for that," the president of Oakland's Pacific Institute says. Scientists are expecting an enormous El NiƱo effect this winter, which will mean biblical amounts of precipitation.

— One result of a warmer overall climate will be higher sea levels. Though areas along the coast, like the Port of LA, have already made some effort to prepare for a rise in waters, coastal 'hoods and "Low-lying areas, including the Los Angeles International Airport, are at risk of being submerged in water."

— Meanwhile, warmer atmospheric conditions hold more water, which can amount to more intense storms, said a US Geological Survey hydrologist, so we'll have those, too. "Atmospheric rivers," a thread of "thick precipitation" that travels through the air like a stream or river, will increase as the climate warms up. (The tail-end of an atmospheric river hit the Bay Area in late December and it was ROUGH.)

— But even though "big storms are expected this winter, Californians should actually anticipate worsening droughts, scientists said." New findings presented at this symposium suggest that there's a 95 percent chance that the changing, warming climate created that high pressure ridge—aka the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge—that's kept rain from falling on California for years—and will probably do it again. "Global warming has at least tripled the probability of the atmospheric condition" that produced the ridge.

— It's not just coastal areas that will be in trouble. Warmer temperatures are creating bigger forest fires (which in turn produce carbon emissions). "Wildfires are of particular concern because conifer forests are thicker than ever and a drier, hotter climate is especially conducive to fire," said one hydrologist.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).



Saturday, August 29, 2015



Scientists discover a way to reverse racial bias in young children.  But how firm is the effect?

I am not sure that the authors of the baby studies below  realize what they have shown.  They showed that in initial encounters babies are biased.  They simply prefer familiar appearances. But that is very temporary.  Given just a little extra information, biases vanish. People recognized as individuals tended to be accepted as individuals, despite differences in appearances.

But that is only the beginning of the story.  What happens in real life outside the deliberately limited context of a psychology laboratory?

What we do see from the experiments described below is that   "Stereotypes" are highly malleable and responsive to extra information.  They are not mentally imprisoning.  Even a little information makes a big difference to impressions.  That is in fact what the whole stereotyping literature shows.  See here, here  and here

So people do respond cautiously to differences in appearances BUT the response is very plastic.  Caution will evaporate if and only if  nothing important is associated with the different appearance.  That is the opposite of the old claim that stereotypes are rigid mental straitjackets.  Given extra information prejudgments  will in fact change rapidly -- for better or for worse.  They are very reality-sensitive.

A rather good example of that process is on view daily in Australia.  Australia has a large East Asian minority, mostly Han Chinese.  And it is so common to see young East Asian women on the arms of tall Caucasian men that one looks with some surprise at couples who are both Han.  In such couples the man will, however, invariably be a TALL Han man.   The little East Asian ladies go for tall men and they get them.  They like height and they want tall children.

And relaxed Australian whites are fine by them.  The ladies are probably in general a bit smarter than the Caucasian whites they grab but they know that the men concerned are easy-going in the  traditional Australian way so they can live with that.

But the tallest population group in Australia are dark-skinned East Africans.  Many are very tall indeed. And so many of them have come to Australia as refugees that it is common to see them lounging around the streets and shopping centres.  But I have yet to see ONE of them partnered with ANY kind of an Asian lady.

The lesson?  Easy.  Interracial relationships may start out from a simplistic base of preferring familiar appearance but the real characteristics of people rapidly come to dominate relationships. African men are generally poor, dumb and aggressive and nobody but their own women wants them, except for a very few socially marginal or foolish white females.  No Asians want them.  So the Asian ladies are racist in that they recognize real racial differences -- but they are not bigoted.  They in fact prefer a race different from their own.  They respond to important differences and ignore unimportant ones.

Reality is so much more complex than the simplistic formulas used by the Left.


Children as young as three months old have been found to have a bias towards women who are the same race as themselves.

Now, a University of Delaware scientist has discovered a simple exercise that he claims can undo this unconscious racial biases in young children.

Using the technique of measuring how much time the babies spend looking at pictures of faces, Paul Quinn has spent a decade studying how infants classify race and gender.

At six months, Quinn said, the infants were classifying faces into three groups - Caucasian, African and Asian.

He has found that, by nine months of age, infants not only distinguish racial categories but also become less able to tell different individuals apart if they are members of a less-familiar race.

For example, white infants can identify white faces as belonging to different individuals, but they are less likely to see Asian or African faces as distinct individuals.

'Might these perceptual biases we see in infants be related to the social biases that we see in older kids, beginning at three or four years of age, and adults?,' Quinn said.  'And if they are, can we use a technique to reduce bias?

'As we tried to answer this question, we hit on the idea that if the perceptual and social biases are linked, we might be able to reduce the social bias by perceptual means.'

In their latest study, published in July in the journal Developmental Science, Quinn and his collaborators in China used photos of African and Asian faces and morphed them together to create ambiguous images that looked equally African and Asian.

Some of the faces had pleasant expressions, while others looked more severe.

When researchers showed the images to four- to six-year-olds in China, the children identified the happy faces as Asian - the category they were used to seeing - and the angry faces as African, a group they rarely saw in daily life.

The scientists' wanted to see whether the children's unconscious racial biases could be disrupted. They showed the youngsters five different African faces and gave each of the individuals a name, repeating the process until the children could identify each of the five faces by name.

When the children then looked at the happy and angry ambiguous-race photos again, their bias in favour of their own racial group had dropped dramatically.

'This process of getting the kids to respond to the [five African] faces as individuals, not as a category, only takes 15-30 minutes, and it made a significant difference,' Quinn said.

'It suggests that what is a social bias has [visual] perceptual components and that it can be disrupted.'

Another, related study that Quinn conducted in his lab at UD with babies from the Newark, Delaware, area has been published online by Developmental Science, with print publication expected in the future.

In this study, researchers worked with Caucasian babies to explore how and at what ages they began forming categories of people based on the racial characteristics of faces.

SOURCE


Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).

Thursday, August 27, 2015


This has got to stop

The story below surely shows once and for all how disastrous is the race rhetoric of Democrats and black race hustlers like Sharpton and Obama.  The rhetoric has created a great upsurge of hate among blacks towards whites -- by telling blacks that every bad thing any black suffers is the result of white racism.

So whites  as a class are in danger, regardless of anything they may have done as individuals.  We are constantly told that all Muslims are not to  blame for the actions of a Muslim minority but blacks have absorbed the opposite lesson about whites.

But I don't suppose that the Left will readily let go of all that delicious hate.  It may need blacks to kill a few  of the Leftist elite to get some caution out of them

Mr Obama could help by announcing emphatically that black disadvantage is NOT due to white racism.  He could also point out that black deaths at the hands of whites are a rarity compared with the other way around.  But he won't.  To renounce the white racism story would go against one of his own basic tenets.

So what is he doing instead?  Blaming guns:  As brainless and as irresponsible as ever.


A man who was fired from his job as a television reporter two years ago took revenge against the small-town Virginia news station by executing two of his former coworkers on live television, and then posting disturbing first-person video of the attack on social media.

Viewers of WDBJ, a CBS affiliate in Moneta, Virginia, watched in horror this morning as Vester Lee Flanagan II, 41, shot dead 24-year-old reporter Alison Parker and cameraman Adam Ward, 27, on live TV as the two were filming a light-hearted segment at 6:45am.

After carrying out the shocking on-air execution, Ward fled and posted video of the attack on social media while also writing about his grudges against the two young journalists in a Twitter rant.

He also faxed a 23-page manifesto-cum-suicide note to a national news station outlining his motives for the attack, saying he bought the handgun he used following the Charleston Church killings, adding: 'my hollow point bullets have the victims’ initials on them'.

Five hours later, police cornered Flanagan a three hours drive northeast in Fauquier County, Virginia where he shot himself in an attempt to commit suicide. Flanagan initially survived the gunshot wound, but died not long after at approximately 1:30pm

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Wednesday, August 26, 2015


 How strong is the link between global warming and California drought?

Easy answer:  No link at all. For a start, drought is a normal occurrence in California.  Second, since there has been no global warming for 18 years, it cannot  be influencing anything.  Things that don't exist don't have effects.  None of that is confronted by the lamebrain below.  He just regurgitates the usual data-free Leftist propaganda.  And thirdly, there is no significant drought.  Releasing dam water to flow straight out to sea for various crazy Greenie reasons is why there is a shortage of water for homes and crops

Further studies are being conducted at this moment to explore the contributions of particulars to the climate variability which brought about the drought and temperature components related with anthropogenic warming. Thus, when rainfall declined in 2012, the air sucked already scant moisture from soil, trees and crops harder than ever.

The climatic change and its effects may be experienced globally and warmer air and weather are not the only ones to blame since other factors such as evaporation rates and precipitation form part of the main contributors.

If human-caused greenhouse gas emissions were not trapping heat, leading to climate change, the state’s drought could be up to 27 percent less severe than it is, the study researchers say.

Yes, global warming is more than three times higher than natural climate changes and this is bad for California.

The study, authored by five researchers from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and one from the University of Idaho’s geography department, said if this trend continues then the state will experience more “persistent aridity” within a few decades, according to an August 20 press release from Columbia.

It’s very clear the warming of California has increased the probability of conditions that create drought.

Unlike the natural variation in climate which produces extreme conditions only occasionally, the demand of additional moisture on account of global warming is on the rise every year with concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rising higher consistently.

The study, said that average California temperatures have increased 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the past 113 years. Because of global warming Californian mountain snows have started melting in an accelerated way as well, whereas 10 years ago the melting was dispersed more gradually in time and has helped freshening up the lowlands during the hot season. The monthly changes were simulated in the quantity of water in each bucket between 1901 and 2014. It was found that global warming has contributed between 8 and 27% to the severity of 2012-2014 California drought. Due to the growing global temperature, this fact is turning out to be true for most places worldwide. This means that by around the 2060s, more or less permanent drought will set in, interrupted only by the rainiest years. If California finds itself struggling with this drought, serious planning needs to take place in order to be resilient to a future where it’s increasingly likely that the current drought will look like child’s play.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). 

Tuesday, August 25, 2015


Humans Allegedly Set To Wipe An India-Sized Chunk Of Forest Off The Earth By 2050  -- or not

More prophecy based on a straight-line extrapolation. Loss of forest cover can be regrettable but we all live on land that was once forest so we can't just assume that any given loss is bad.

The article itself notes that anti-logging laws have largely mitigated any problem in the Amazon so it is mainly S.E. Asia that is losing its native forests.  The forests there are being replaced by oil-palm plantations. So we are seeing a change in forest cover, not a loss of it.

If Greenies think that the change is deplorable they need to recognize that they and the food alarmists are responsible for it.  Palm-oil is a profitable crop because of the various bans on dietary fats that have been put in place by food alarmists. First saturated fats were banned in food manufacturing and now trans-fats have just about been phased out.  Palm oil is all that is reasonably left for manufacturers to use.

That the human race has been using saturated fats (such as dripping or tallow) in its cookery as far back as we can go does not faze the food alarmists.  The flimsiest evidence that something is bad for you sends them into hysteria, eventually pushing weary legislators into giving them the bans that they want.

No doubt palm oil will also be found to be bad for you in due course so at that point the palm oil plantations will probably be replaced by pine planations.  But Greenies don't like pines, either.  There's no such thing as a happy Greenie


By 2050, an area of forests the size of India is set to be wiped off the planet if humans continue on their current path of deforestation, according to a new report. That’s bad news for the creatures that depend on these forest ecosystems for survival, but it’s also bad news for the climate, as the loss of these forests will release more than 100 gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The report, published Monday by the Center for Global Development (CGD), found that, without new policies aimed at cutting back on deforestation, 289 million hectares (about 1,115,840 square miles) of tropical forests will be cleared away. That’s a chunk, the report states, that’s equal to one-seventh of what the Earth’s total tropical forest area was in 2000.

And, according to the report, the 169 gigatons of carbon dioxide that this deforestation will unleash is equal to one-sixth of the carbon budget that humans can emit if they want to keep warming below 2°C — the level that’s generally viewed as the maximum warming Earth can endure while still avoiding the most dangerous climate impacts (and even 2°C is seen by many experts as too high).

The study, unlike other recent studies on deforestation, projects that in a business-as-usual scenario, in which the world doesn’t make any effort to reduce deforestation, tropical deforestation will increase, rather than decrease. According to the study, tropical deforestation rates in such a scenario will likely climb steadily in the 2020s and 2030s and then speed up around 2040, “as areas of high forest cover in Latin America that are currently experiencing little deforestation come under greater threat.”

The study does point to one change in policy that would cut deforestation rates and help alleviate climate change: a price on carbon. According to the report, a price of $20 per ton of carbon would keep 41 gigatons of carbon dioxide from being emitted between 2016 and 2050, and a price of $50 per ton would keep 77 gigatons from being emitted.

“Our analysis corroborates the conclusions of previous studies that reducing tropical deforestation is a sizable and low-cost option for mitigating climate change,” the study’s authors write. “In contrast to previous studies, we project that the amount of emissions that can be avoided at low-cost by reducing tropical deforestation will increase rather than decrease in future decades.”

The study also noted that, if all tropical countries put in place anti-deforestation laws that were “as effective as those in the Brazilian Amazon post-2004,” then 60 gigatons of carbon dioxide would be kept out of the atmosphere. Brazil took action against deforestation in 2004 and 2008, and deforestation rates in the country have fallen from 27,000 square kilometers (about 10,424 square miles) in 2004 to 7,000 square kilometers (about 2,700 square miles) in 2010

More twaddle HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).



Monday, August 24, 2015


Pat Condell's latest



He skewers Leftist comedians, referring particularly to how they malign UKIP, a conservative British political party that wants Britain out of the EU and is critical of immigration. Around 4 million Brits (over 12%) voted UKIP at the last national election, despite monolithic condemnation from the media.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Sunday, August 23, 2015


Bright young thing says America is responsible for the practice of sex slavery by ISIS



Kecia Ali is a Professor of religion at Boston university.  She has written an article which looks at the assertion by ISIS that sex slavery is Islamic.  She concludes that it is permitted by Islam but not obligatory.  She then goes on to conclude her article as follows:

"In focusing on current abuses in the Middle East, perpetrated by those claiming the mantle of Islam, Americans -- whose Constitution continues to permit enslavement as punishment for crime -- deflect attention from partial U.S. responsibility for the current crisis in Iraq. Sanctions followed by military invasion and its brutal aftermath laid the groundwork for the situation Callimachi describes. Moral high ground is in short supply. The core idea animating enslavement is that some lives matter more than others. As any American who has been paying attention knows, this idea has not perished from the earth."

Judging by her name she could be of Turkish descent and, as one would therefore expect, is in general very pro-Muslim. Robert Spencer points out that she misrepresents Islam.  Muslim apologists have to do that these days

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Saturday, August 22, 2015


Left-Right Differences on right and wrong

Dennis Prager is right below but seems only dimly aware of the philosophical difficulties in the idea of moral truth.  The basic problem is:  "How do we check it?"  Where is the information that confirms what we think?  If I think that a dog has four legs, that is easy to check. I just look.  But where do we look if we think abortion is wrong?  Under a rock somewhere?  A statement "X is wrong" sounds like "grass is green" but is clearly very different.  There is no obvious way to check it.  That it is just an opinion is the obvious conclusion. And that is where Leftists get their claim that "There is no such thing as right and wrong".

Christians of course have no such difficulties.  The Ten Commandments say: "Thou shalt not kill" so abortion is clearly wrong.

But many conservatives (particularly in Australia) are not religious.  Even if they believe in God, the idea that the churches know any more about him than anyone else just seems implausible.  So what do they do about morality?

They view morality as having evolved.  Moral standards are what have enabled us to survive as social creatures.  They are what has been found to work in building a civilized society.  If we abandon them we embark on a voyage without a compass and without a map. And the sorry results of abandoning them are often seen. When, for instance, standards of restraint, moderation and self-discipline are abandoned in favor of "me, me, me" we often find people descending into drug abuse and early, miserable death.  Most people would wish not to end that way.

The only really interesting question concerns the very long time humans have had to acquire ideas about what has survival value and what has not.  As far back as history takes us, we know that formal moral codes have changed little over the last 4 or 5 thousand years.  The code of Hammurabi (who died around 2000 BC) has a lot in common with the book of Leviticus. So the ideas of right behavior that have guided us to where we are today are pretty clear.  Successive generations and successive societies have come to pretty similar conclusions about what aids survival and the good life.  There are differences of detail but the basics alter little.

But does the encoding of those ideas go back even further?  It does.  It goes back a very long way indeed.  Chimpanzees have been observed to have behaviour customs that assist the survival of their troop.  And it seems that some of the behaviours concerned are learned --  but not all.  Chimps still behave in chimp-like ways even if brought up in isolation from other chimps.  So some instincts of right behaviour have apparently become genetically coded and transmitted among chimps.  How much more so should that have happened in us?

And it has.  We very often have an instinctive response that something is "Just wrong" (harming babies, for instance).  The "authority" for the rightness or wrongness of something is within us, not anywhere outside of us. We cannot find it under a rock or anywhere else. It is a large part of what is called our "conscience".  It is our evolutionary wisdom.  It is a set of responses that comes from deep within the past of our (human) race. Morality really is in our genes. The history of our species is encoded in us.

It is of course not a perfect guide to adaptive behaviour any more than any law is.  There are always situations that a law does not fit well, and our instincts of rightness can be swamped by powerful external influences -- such as a belief in Islam.  That explains why Muslim parents can rejoice in their children blowing themselves up as suicide bombers.  All normal parental instincts are swamped by mental conclusions about what has value.

So there will always be debate about what is right and wrong.  For non-psychopathic individuals, however, moral instincts will be our best guide, particularly when supported and supplemented by verbal traditions such as the Ten Commandments.  We abandon our  past at our peril.

There are, of course, no unchallengeable answers in philosophy.  A moral rejectionist might, for instance, say:  "What's all this bit about survival?  That doesn't bother me.  I just want to enjoy myself while I am here.  Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!"  There is no good answer to that if it is a sincerely held view but it rarely is.  I could, for instance, reply: "Then you will not object if I put a bullet through your brain right now".  That will normally induce some hesitancy.

We see something similar when Leftists say that "There is no such thing as right and wrong".  They will very often follow that immediately by a claim that racism, inequality or something else  is wrong.  Racism is something that does not exist??  Moral rejectionists have their own very large philosophical problems -- which is why they need Freudian neurotic strategies such as denial and compartmentalization to remain (marginally) sane


How can we determine what is morally right? The answer to this question — the most important question human beings need to answer — is a major difference between Left and Right.

For conservatives, the answer is, and has always been, that there are moral truths — objective moral standards — to which every person is accountable. In America, this has meant accountability to the Creator, the God of the Bible, and to Judeo-Christian values.

For the Left, the answer has always been — meaning since Karl Marx, the father of Leftism — that there is no transcendent source of morality. On the contrary, as Marx wrote, “Man is God,” and therefore each human being is the author of his or her own moral standards.

There are, of course, both religious leftists and secular conservatives, but the secular-religious difference explains many of the fundamental differences between Right and Left.

As a rule, leftists fear and have contempt for people who base their values on a transcendent source such as religion and the Bible. Such people, in the Left’s view, “can’t think for themselves — they need a God and a religion to tell them what’s right and wrong.” Leftists contrast these conservatives with themselves, people who think issues through and do not need God or religion.

This ideal of thinking everything through for oneself sounds admirable. And to a certain extent it is. People should think things through. And too often, religious people can sound like they haven’t done so.

But if there is no God and religion, there are no moral truths, only moral opinions. Without God and religion, good and evil, right and wrong, don’t objectively exist. They are subjective terms that just mean “I like” or “I don’t like.”

Therefore, no matter how much one thinks things through, without God and religion — specifically, the God of and the religions based on the Bible — the individual’s conclusions about what is right or wrong can only be opinions about what is right or wrong. Without God and religion, morally speaking, there is no fixed North or fixed South. The needle points wherever the owner of the compass thinks it ought to point.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Recently, in The New York Times, a professor of philosophy wrote about this complete absence of moral truth among younger Americans:

“What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised? I was.

"The overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

"Our public schools teach … there are no moral facts. And if there are no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.

"It should not be a surprise that there is rampant cheating on college campuses: If we’ve taught our students for 12 years that there is no fact of the matter as to whether cheating is wrong, we can’t very well blame them for doing so later on.”

So, then, if there is no moral truth, how do most secular people arrive at moral decisions?  According to how they feel. On the Left, personal feelings usually supplant objective standards.

Many liberal parents and teachers do not tell their children what is right and wrong. Rather, they ask their children and students, “How do you feel about it?”

In fact, feelings often supplant reason, not just moral truths. On the Left, feelings for the poor, for selected minorities, for the downtrodden, gays, women, Muslims and others are frequently all that is necessary to formulate policy.

For the conservative, as important as feelings may be, feelings are just not as important as standards in making social policy. But for the contemporary liberal, feeling — or “compassion,” as the Left puts it — is determinative.

As much as one may — and should — feel about historic injustices committed against black Americans, the conservative will not eliminate standards. Therefore, conservatives oppose lowering admissions standards at academic institutions for black students; liberal compassion is for it.

Conservatives generally oppose changing the marital standard of one man-one woman; liberals' compassion for gays supports it. Indeed, given the supplanting of standards with feelings, liberals will find it difficult to oppose polygamy. If love between people is the criterion for marriage, two people who love a third person should not be denied the right to marry that person.

Conservatives oppose abolishing the biological standard of gender identity and therefore oppose allowing men who identify as women to play on women’s sports teams; liberals have compassion for the transgendered and therefore drop the athletic standard.

Conservatives' commitment to a standard of true and false means identifying terrorists as Islamic; liberals feel for the many good Muslims in the world and therefore often refuse to identify Islamic terror by name.

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington’s most famous speech, the first president perfectly expressed the conservative view on the need for God and religion for moral standards and for societal standards generally:

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports … these firmest props of the duties of Man and citizens.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).





Oklahoma Teacher Sentenced for Sex with Student - Update


Daresa Poe

(Waynoka, Oklahoma) Former local Waynoka Public Schools teacher Daresa Deann Poe, 32, has pleaded guilty to assault with intent to commit a felony.

According to a plea agreement, Poe was sentenced to staying at home (supervised) and she is required to register as a sex offender.

* * * * *

Oklahoma Teacher Accused of Sex with Student
[Previous 1/26/15 post]
(Waynoka, Oklahoma) A 32-year-old teacher at Waynoka High School, Daresa Deann Poe, has been accused of engaging in sex with a student.

Poe faces a charge of second-degree rape. According to Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation Special Agent Chris Ray:
The student reportedly told Ray he had sex with a Waynoka High School teacher, Poe, for a couple of weeks. In a handwritten statement, Poe admitted to having sex with the student, according to the affidavit.

The student reported engaging in sexual intercourse with Poe five or six times since the beginning of January — with the most recent encounter allegedly occurring Tuesday. The incidents allegedly occurred at various locations in Waynoka and Woods County, including the teacher’s lounge at the school and at Poe’s home.
Poe was booked and released on $10,000.

Friday, August 21, 2015


Delaware Woman Sentenced for Rape of Boy - Update


Molly Shattuck

(Georgetown, Delaware)
Molly Shattuck, the former Baltimore socialite and Ravens cheerleader who pleaded guilty in June to fourth-degree rape after an incident involving a 15-year-old boy, was sentenced to 48 weekends in jail on Friday afternoon in Delaware.

The 48-year-old woman will spend every other weekend in jail over the next two years and be required to register as a sex offender in Delaware for the next 25 years, the Baltimore Sun reports.
OK

* * * * *

Delaware Woman Guilty of Rape of Boy - Update
[Previous 6/17/15 post]
(Georgetown, Delaware) Former NFL cheerleader Molly Shattuck, 48, has pleaded guilty to fourth-degree rape of a 15-year-old classmate of her son. A sentencing date was not been reported.

* * * * *

Delaware Woman Accused of Sex with Boy, 15
[Previous 11/5/14 post]
(Georgetown, Delaware) A 47-year-old mother of three and former NFL cheerleader, Molly Shattuck, has been accused of doing the nasty with a 15-year-old boy.

Shattuck has been indicted on counts of rape, unlawful sexual contact, and distributing alcohol to a minor. Shattuck pleaded not guilty in Sussex County Superior Court in Georgetown, Delaware.
Key to the investigation is what allegedly happened Labor Day weekend in Bethany Beach, Delaware, where Molly Shattuck, her kids and some of her kids' friends were staying in a rented beach house. The boy stayed over one night.

The documents say, "Sometime around 2 a.m. Sunday morning, they drove to a liquor store and (Molly) Shattuck purchased a 12-pack of Miller Lite and a 12-pack of Bud Light for them."

The younger kids were left home alone. Once back at the house, Molly Shattuck allegedly performed oral sex on the boy, first outside the home while walking the dog and again in her bedroom.

The documents say "(the boy) described the undergarments (Molly) Shattuck was wearing when he entered her bedroom."

The documents say she allegedly performed oral sex on the boy and told him "if he wanted to have sex she would. The boy opted out. He decided to leave. At that point, she told him to come back later but he did not go back."
After arrest, Shattuck was released on $84,000 bail.

Tip: Howie

Iowa Woman Convicted of Sex Abuse of Boy - Update


Mindy Jo Fetters

(Osage, Iowa) In accordance with a plea agreement, Mindy Jo Fetters, 23, has pleaded guilty to child endangerment resulting in injury.

As a result, Fetters was sentenced to three years of probation and fined $750.

* * * * *

Iowa Woman Charged with Sex Abuse of Boy
[Previous 7/27/14 post]
(Riceville, Iowa) A 22-year-old local woman, Mindy Jo Fetters, has been accused of sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy.

Fetters faces counts of third-degree sexual abuse, assault with intent to commit sexual abuse and indecent exposure.

Fetters pleaded not guilty, posted bond and was released to await trial.

Thursday, August 20, 2015


Pennsylvania Coach and Student


Emily Feeney

(Malvern, Pennsylvania)
A former counselor and swim coach at Malvern Prep School was arrested Wednesday on charges of sexually assaulting a student at the private, all-boys high school.

Emily Feeney, 40, of Wayne, is accused of attempting to seduce a 16-year-old student swimmer by various means while working as the school's director of college counseling, including promising to help him secure admission to Harvard University, the Chester County district attorney said Wednesday.
Feeney was booked and released on $75,000 bail.

The End of the Arctic? Ocean Could be Ice Free by 2015

So said well-known Warmist idiot Mark Hertsgaard in 2013   -- excerpt below.  No need to say he is a false prophet, is there?  Arctic ice has in fact become more extensive recently.  What he says sounds so reasonable and well-informed.  Paranoid schizophrenics often do.  Though I think he is really just a publicity hound who will do and say whatever it takes to get noticed. He is known to be economical with the truth, cheerfully representing himself as being what he is not.   Another one of his gems is that we are going to run out of wheat.  He also fancies himself as  Galileo but has got it exactly backwards. It is Hertsgaard who relies on conventional authority and who quotes not one single scientific fact.  He's diligent in his evangelism, though.  He has written six books including, most recently, “HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth.”

Say goodbye to polar bears and a whole lot of ice. New research suggests the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free by 2015, with devastating consequences for the world. Can it be stopped?

Someone better tell Santa Claus. First it was polar bears that were threatened by global warming. Now it’s reindeer too. As temperatures in the Arctic skyrocket, reindeer are suffering staggeringly large, rapid population losses. “Herds of reindeer have declined by one-third since the 1990s as their access to food sources, breeding grounds and historic migration routes have been altered,” reports the environmental audit committee of the British Parliament.

The entire planet is getting hotter, but the top of the world is warming twice as fast as the global average. One leading expert, Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at the University of Cambridge, says the Arctic Ocean could be completely free of ice in summer as soon as 2015. An overheated Arctic in turn threatens catastrophic knock-on effects for the rest of the globe, including more extreme weather; faster sea level rise; and a higher chance of accelerating global warming to where it becomes unstoppable—what scientists refer to as “runaway” global warming.

Yet even as the number of reindeer in the Arctic is declining, the number of warships, cargo vessels and drilling rigs is increasing. In a little-noticed announcement, the United States Defense Secretary, Chuck Hagel, said on November 22 that the Pentagon is increasing its Arctic presence. Citing a “potential for tapping what may be as much as a quarter of the planet’s undiscovered oil and gas,” Hagel declared that the US “will remain prepared to detect, deter, prevent and defeat threats.” For his part, Russian president Vladimir Putin has pledged to turn the Arctic into “an international transport artery” that could cut one-third of the travel time and costs for trade between Europe and Asia compared to the traditional route through the Suez Canal. China, too, is setting its sights upon the Arctic. In May, it gained “observer” status on the Arctic Council—a high level intergovernmental group that coordinates international policies at the top of the world—despite its lack of territorial holdings in the Arctic. Chinese state-owned firms have also signed deals to exploit oil, gas and minerals in the Arctic.

Arctic ice cover has been declining since the 1950s, said professor Wadhams, who has led forty polar expeditions since first visiting the region in 1969. The biggest decline occurred in 2007, when the area covered by ice in summer decreased to roughly half of its usual amount. That left “an ocean of open water at the top of the planet—an unprecedented effect,” Wadhams said in an interview.

There was another large decrease in 2012, but Wadhams and other experts also worry that the thickness of Arctic ice is plummeting. Since satellites cannot accurately measure ice thickness, Wadhams has been going on board British nuclear submarines to map the ice from below with sonar. Arctic ice thickness has declined by 43 percent between the 1970s and 2000s, Wadhams has calculated, “an enormous loss” that he attributes to the higher temperatures of both air and sea in the Arctic.

More HERE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).



Manning Found Guilty of Violating Prison Rules - Update


Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning

(Wichita, Kansas)
Convicted national security leaker Chelsea Manning was found guilty Tuesday of violating prison rules and will receive three weeks of recreational restrictions at the Kansas military prison where she's serving her 35-year sentence, her attorney said.

The transgender Army private was accused of having a copy of Vanity Fair with Caitlyn Jenner on the cover and an expired tube of toothpaste, among other things.
OK

* * * * *

Bradley Manning Sentenced to 35 Years
[Previous 8/21/13 post]
(Fort Meade, Maryland)
The Army soldier who leaked more than 700,000 Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports and diplomatic cables while working as an intelligence analyst was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, 25, who gave reams of classified information to WikiLeaks, faced up to 90 years in prison. He was credited with 1,294 days already served and was and be dishonorably discharged. He could be eligible for parole before he reaches the age of 40.
Good.

Wednesday, August 19, 2015


Melbourne, Australia,  named world's most liveable city again

These rankings do tell something about the quality of life in the cities concerned but the differences are highly subjective.  Another ranking put Tokyo first!  Most of the raters in the present case would have been from England's Home Counties.  So it is amusing to note how similar to the Home Counties the highly rated cities are.  4 out of the top 5 were even English-speaking!  The same 4 were also in monarchies with the Queen as Head of State.  Mustn't laugh!  Definitely congenial places for English people.  But hey!  I like Melbourne too

Melbourne has been named the world's most liveable city for the fifth year in a row, achieving a near perfect score on the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) liveability survey of 140 cities.

The survey rated cities out of 100 in the areas of health care, education, stability, culture and environment and infrastructure.  Melbourne again achieved a score of 97.5, just two-and-a-half points shy of perfection.  The five most liveable cities:

    Melbourne, Australia
    Vienna, Austria
    Vancouver, Canada
    Toronto, Canada
    Adelaide, Australia

Adelaide was ranked in fifth place again with an overall rating of 96.6.

"Those that score best tend to be mid-sized cities in wealthier countries with a relatively low population density," the EIU report said.

"These can foster a range of recreational activities without leading to high crime levels or overburdened infrastructure."

Seven of the top 10 scoring cities were in Australia and Canada.

Melbourne is Australia's fastest-growing capital and the only city in the world to have won the title five consecutive times. International visits have increased by 8 per cent in that time.

While celebrating the ranking, the Victorian Government said it would "never be complacent", investing $20 billion in transport infrastructure and $5.4 billion in health and education to create a stronger economy.

"Melbourne has the best of everything and this title proves it," Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said.  "Perfect scores in health care, education and infrastructure, culture, environment and sport are all proof there's no place like Victoria."

Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle said he was "very proud" of the accolade.  "It is particularly pleasing in a year when the Economist Intelligence Unit notes that many cities lost ground," he said.  "We must be doing something right in our cities in this part of the world."

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Subway Jared Fogle in a Pickle


Jared Fogle

(Indianapolis)
Jared Fogle, former Subway spokesman, reportedly will plead guilty today to possession of child pornography in accordance with a plea agreement.[…]

Jared's guilty plea means child porn was likely discovered on his home computer, which was seized by the FBI in July. As part of the FBI raid, electronics and DVDs were removed from Jared's Indiana home.
Subway ended the relationship with Fogle in July 2015.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015


Indiana Woman Accused of Sex with Boy


Ashley Ann Turner

(Westport, Indiana) A 25-year-old local woman, Ashley Ann Turner, has been accused of engaging in sex with a 15-year-old boy and sending sexually explicit photos to him.
She was charged with sexual misconduct with a minor (Level 4 felony) and child solicitation (Level 5 felony) Monday in Decatur Circuit Court, according to court documents.
Turner was booked into jail with bond set at $2,000.

Trenberth restates the faith

He would!  He says that natural variability is preventing warming.  By that logic, maybe the slight warming of the 20th century was caused by natural variability too.  It is all just speculation

There are signs that the planet is heating up, and even 'on fire.'  This is according to Dr Kevin Trenberth, a scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, who claims the global warming 'pause' is now over.

The so-called pause refers to the fact that the temperature of Earth's surface has increased by just 0.06°C in the past 15 years.

It has been used by some groups as evidence that climate change is not happening.

But Dr Trenberth argues that natural variability in weather patterns has masked the upward trend in temperatures, and he says this variability may be about to end.

He points out that in the western region of North America, the prolonged drought has led to high temperatures and many wildfires, from Canada and the Northwest earlier this summer to California more recently.

In the Pacific, hurricanes, typhoons and tropical cyclones have caused havoc, and with several damaging hits in Japan, China and Taiwan, in particular.

Globally, surface temperatures have been setting record high values. US temperatures this year are well above average.

Meanwhile, precipitation has been above average in much of the US outside of the West, making temperatures lower than they otherwise would have been.

In a paper titled, 'Has There Been a Global Warming Hiatus?', Trenberth argues natural variability through of the oceans, atmosphere, land and ice is responsible for the strange weather.

'The warmest year in the 20th century was 1998. However, since then there has been an apparent absence of an increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) from 1998 through 2013.

'This has become known as the 'hiatus,' said Trenberth, writing in The Conversation. 'While 2005 and 2010 GMST values slightly exceeded the 1998 value, the trend upwards slowed markedly until 2014, which is now the warmest year on record.

'Moreover, there are excellent prospects that 2015 will break that record – the past 12 months through June 2015 are indeed the warmest 12 months on record. 'It looks like the hiatus is over.'

Trenberth says there are major natural variabilities that prevent the global temperature rise from simply being linear.

The main variability is the Pacific Decadal Oscillation - or PDO - in which the planet's largest ocean goes through a cycle of burying heat and then releasing it.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the PDO has gone into a positive phase when stored heat gets released to the atmosphere and across the globe.

'There are major changes in Pacific trade winds, sea level pressure, sea level, rainfall and storm locations throughout the Pacific and Pacific rim countries, but also extending into the southern oceans and across the Arctic into the Atlantic,' said Dr Trenberth.

'There is good but incomplete evidence that these changes in winds alter ocean currents, ocean convection and overturning, which leads to changes in the amount of heat being sequestered at greater depths in the ocean during the negative phase of the PDO.'

'The role of natural variability paints a different picture than one of steadily rising global mean temperatures,' added Dr Trenberth.

'Indeed, the combination of decadal variability plus a heating trend from increasing greenhouse gases makes the GMST record more like a rising staircase than a monotonic climb.'

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Wyoming Teacher Gets Prison for Sex Abuse - Update


Anna-Marie Andersen

(Cheyenne, Wyoming)
Former Freedom Elementary teacher Anna Andersen walks into court for sentencing Monday at the Laramie County Courthouse in Cheyenne.

Andersen, 55, was sentenced to 8 to 12 years in prison for one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and 4 to 5 years in prison for one count of third-degree sexual abuse of a minor, to be served at the same time.
OK

* * * * *

Wyoming Teacher Pleads Not Guilty to Sex Abuse - Update
[Previous 8/1/14 post]
(Cheyenne, Wyoming) This week, elementary school teacher Anna-Maria Andersen pleaded not guilty to sexual abuse of a minor.
Andersen, 54, stood next to her attorney, Sean Barrett, shackled at the ankles as Laramie County District Judge Steven Sharpe read the charges against her.

“As for count one, third-degree sexual abuse of a minor, what do you plead?” Sharpe asked.

“Not guilty,” Andersen said in a hushed tone.

Andersen also entered not-guilty pleas to five counts of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor.
A trial date of August 5 has been scheduled.

* * * * *

Wyoming Teacher Accused of Nasty with Youngster
[Previous 4/12/14 post]
(Cheyenne, Wyoming) A 54-year-old teacher at Freedom Elementary School, Anna-Marie Andersen, has been accused of sexual abuse of a minor.

Andersen faces counts of first degree, second degree and third degree sexual abuse of a minor.
The victim was a boy between the ages of 13 and 15.

She was arrested by the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office on March 19th, however papers were not filed in Laramie County District Court until Friday when the information was released.

The incidents occurred between June of 2012 and March of 2014.
Details on booking are unavailable.

Monday, August 17, 2015


Oklahoma Teacher Gets Prison for Rape - Update

(Hollis, Oklahoma) Jennifer Caswell, 29, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison with eligibility for parole after 8 1/2 years.

* * * * *

Oklahoma Teacher Guilty of Rape - Update
[Previous 6/2/15 post]
(Hollis, Oklahoma) Local teacher Jennifer Caswell, formerly Jennifer Sexton, pleaded guilty to rape and sodomy. Sentencing scheduled for August.

* * * * *

Oklahoma Teacher, 28, and Male Student, 15
[Previous 8/19/14 post]
(Hollis, Oklahoma) A 28-year-old English teacher formerly at Hollis Middle School, Jennifer Sexton, has been accused of engaging in sex with one of her students. She was arrested in Mississippi while with the 15-year-old boy in a hotel room.

On June 18, Sexton was arrested on suspicion of statutory rape and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Last week, Sexton was charged with three counts of second-degree rape, two counts of enticing a child, and one count of forcible sodomy.
After Mississippi, the case changed. The boy, whose identity is being withheld because he is a victim of sexual abuse, spoke to investigators with consent from a parent, court records show.

The student described how, three days before she quit her teaching job, Sexton had sex with him in the back of her classroom. In the weeks that followed, Sexton picked up the student numerous times in her SUV and drove to a secluded area. They had sex in her car, her house and the home of his father — a pastor.

During the same time period, Sexton filed for divorce from her husband. On May 13, a Harmon County judge granted the divorce and a name change. As of June 1, Sexton’s name was restored to Jennifer Caswell, her maiden name.
Sexton was booked and released on bail.

My Alternative Wikipedia

Over the years I have on various occasions attempted to make contributions to Wikipedia.  Whatever I put up there, however, gets wiped.  Wikipedia editors are clearly Left-leaning so I can understand that they wipe anything written from my libertarian/conservative viewpoint.  But even stuff with no obvious political slant disappears.

From what I can see, Wikipedia editors in fact spend most of their  day deleting what others have put up.  So there is clearly an informally-specified  Wikipedia culture that you have to conform to if you wish your writings to appear there.  It also seems likely that, once you have been identified as a bad egg, you are just totally black-banned, no matter how good what you want to post may be.

That is something of a pity as some of the information I try to put up is not found anywhere else in English. My major recreational interest these days is Austro/Hungarian operetta.  I spend a couple of hours nightly watching it.  Rather frivolous, I guess, but I have the privilege of reading and writing serious stuff all day so light relief has its place.

So I have come to know rather a lot about it.  Being the academic type, I also research the shows as well as watching them.  I look at who is singing, who the artistic director is and other details.  I try to accumulate biographical information about the singers, about the historical background, and information about particular notable performances.

Operetta does have a worldwide audience but it is almost all sung and written in German and the information about it, including libretti, is also mostly in German.  So if English Wikipedia does have any information at all about (say) a particular singer, it will mostly be pretty bare-bones.  Wikipedia in German, and sometimes in Italian, will have much more information.  And German Wikipedia is only a start. There are many music-oriented German-language sites that include operetta information.

Since I can read German and Italian (the latter with difficulty) I can however usually find out quite a lot more about a singer than most people in the English-speaking world would be able to. And I am inclined to pass on that information in English.  But Wikipedia won't let me.

So I have set up My Alternative Wikipedia to draw together my posts on matters that I think have reference interest.  It's not all operetta but mostly so.  And that may be a useful approach.  Most of the performers in operetta are from Europe and have European names -- such as Ingeborg Hallstein or Dagmar Schellenberger -- that would rarely be encountered in English-language sources.  So a Google search on those names should lead quickly to my site.

And having an operetta database can lead you to the unexpected. If, for instance, you Google the very popular "Ivan Rebroff", you will find a multitude of well-deserved references to him as a jolly Russian bass singer of both popular and operatic works. But without a comprehensive reference to operetta, you may not realize that he was also a brilliant comic actor.  His performance of red-faced rage at the rejection of his "daughter" in a 1970s performance of  Zigeunerbaron is far and away the best I have seen.  His whole life was an act, in fact.  He was a German, not a Russian.  And he died a Greek.  As all conservatives know, reality is complicated.

First, however, we have to get Google to index my site.  They  do not so far appear to have done so.  So I would be much obliged if anybody reading this would put up a link to my new site on any site that they may run. The more links there are to it, the more likely it will appear in Google searches.

And I should perhaps note that Austro/Hungarian operetta is very politically incorrect these days.  It was written around 100 years ago so reflects a more natural set of values.  Membership of the military is, for instance, treated with great respect, and even is to some extent glorified.  No modern Leftist would applaud that.  But, as a former Sergeant in the Australian army, I do myself have every respect for the military.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Ohio Woman Accused in Baby's Death


Brenda Pratt

(Mansfield, Ohio)
The Richland County Prosecutor's Office painted the death of a 10-week-old baby girl as "a death of innocence and a blizzard of lies that followed afterward from the defendant."

Brenda Pratt, 63, is charged with four counts in connection with the death of Sophia Rock: murder, endangering children, felonious assault and involuntary manslaughter.
Pratt was the babysitter.

Sunday, August 16, 2015


How Amusing! A Warmist attack on Prof. Judith Curry that is totally lacking in substance

Unlike the Left, I am not afraid to hear what people with different opinions to mine say.  So I read a fair bit of the stuff that emanates from the Green/Left.  It's mainly amusing for its feeble reasoning and boiling anger but occasionally something seems worth mentioning.  A recent attack on Judith Curry is a case in point.

I won't reproduce the attack as it is mostly abuse and is full of foul language but I give the source below for those who wish to check.  The attempted hit-piece is by the Tony Heller impersonator, Greg Laden, and is titled "As the World Burns, Episode I: Judith Curry & Mark Steyn, Partners in Slime".  Just the title tells you most of what you need to know, I think.

So does the article parade some new climate facts?  Of course not.  Warmists basically don't have any.  All they have is speculation, lies and abuse -- like pretending that statistically non-significant temperature changes exist.

The post seems to have been inspired by the fact that a well-known and senior climatologist, Wallace Broecker, said some derogatory things about "Hockeystick" Mann. Laden wants to discredit what Broecker said. How does he do that?

He points out that Broecker does not pull his punches.  If he thinks something is crap, he says so.  He is an energetic and  fearless critic. Therefore Broecker's adverse comments about Mann reflect ill will rather than a considered judgment.

I think you can see that, when I put Laden's argument in temperate language, it just does not hold up.  There is no evidence presented to say that Broecker has ever been wrong about anything.  We don't even have a critique of what he said about Mann.  All we have is an attack on Broecker's character: How typically Warmist.  And how infantile!

Did I say " feeble reasoning and boiling anger"?

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


Saturday, August 15, 2015


We live in an era of unusual climate STABILITY

That's what the article below says in its academic way.  I have been saying it for years

Unstable AMOC during glacial intervals and millennial variability: The role of mean sea ice extent

Florian SĆ©vellec & Alexey V. Fedorov

Abstract

A striking feature of paleoclimate records is the greater stability of the Holocene epoch relative to the preceding glacial interval, especially apparent in the North Atlantic region. In particular, strong irregular variability with an approximately 1500 yr period, known as the Dansgaard–Oeschger (D–O) events, punctuates the last glaciation, but is absent during the interglacial. Prevailing theories, modeling and data suggest that these events, seen as abrupt warming episodes in Greenland ice cores and sea surface temperature records in the North Atlantic, are linked to reorganizations of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). In this study, using a new low-order ocean model that reproduces a realistic power spectrum of millennial variability, we explore differences in the AMOC stability between glacial and interglacial intervals of the 100 kyr glacial cycle of the Late Pleistocene (1 kyr=1000 yr). Previous modeling studies show that the edge of sea ice in the North Atlantic shifts southward during glacial intervals, moving the region of the North Atlantic Deep Water formation and the AMOC also southward. Here we demonstrate that, by shifting the AMOC with respect to the mean atmospheric precipitation field, such a displacement makes the system unstable, which explains chaotic millennial variability during the glacials and the persistence of stable ocean conditions during the interglacials.

Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Volume 429, 1 November 2015, Pages 60–68


Thursday, August 13, 2015


The economics of mitigating climate change: What can we know?

The academic journal article below by Richard A. Rosena and  Edeltraud Guentherb is amusing.  It says that we have insufficient knowledge to predict future economic impacts of climate change but they still end up saying "mitigation policies must be forcefully implemented anyway".  They had to say that in order to get their article published

Abstract

The long-term economics of mitigating climate change over the long run has played a high profile role in the most important analyses of climate change in the last decade, namely the Stern Report and the IPCC's Fourth Assessment. However, the various kinds of uncertainties that affect these economic results raise serious questions about whether or not the net costs and benefits of mitigating climate change over periods as long as 50 to 100 years can be known to such a level of accuracy that they should be reported to policymakers and the public. This paper provides a detailed analysis of the derivation of these estimates of the long-term economic costs and benefits of mitigation. It particularly focuses on the role of technological change, especially for energy efficiency technologies, in making the net economic results of mitigating climate change unknowable over the long run.

Because of these serious technical problems, policymakers should not base climate change mitigation policy on the estimated net economic impacts computed by integrated assessment models. Rather, mitigation policies must be forcefully implemented anyway given the actual physical climate change crisis, in spite of the many uncertainties involved in trying to predict the net economics of doing so.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).




Wednesday, August 12, 2015


Missouri Teacher Guilty of Sex with Girl - Update


(Marshfield, Missouri)
A former Marshfield teacher pleaded guilty Tuesday to sex crimes involving a 16-year-old student.

Johnna Feazell, who was an 8th-grade teacher and coach in Marshfield, pleaded guilty to felony charges of statutory sodomy and sexual contact with a student following a relationship she had with a teenage girl last fall.

Sentencing has been scheduled for Nov. 3 in Webster County. The maximum sentence for the sodomy charge is 10 years in prison.
OK

* * * * *

Missouri Teacher Accused of Sex with Girl
[Previous 10/28/14 post]
(Marshfield, Missouri) A 46-year-old teacher with the Marshfield School District, Johnna Feazell, has been arrested on suspicion of wagga-wagga, slurp-slurp with a 16-year-old girl.

Feazell faces two counts of tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution and one count of tampering with a victim or witness in a felony prosecution.
Police say the teacher tried to obstruct their investigation of whether she had a sexual encounter with a 16-year-old girl.

Feazell was arrested on Oct. 16 after police served a search warrant at her home. She was charged with statutory sodomy and attempted enticement of a minor on Oct. 17. The Marshfield School District, where she taught for 14 years, put her on paid leave.
Feazell was booked into custody and released on $50,000 bond.

Another meltdown of official wisdom

People who eat lots of butter or cream are no more likely to have an early death than anyone else, a study suggests.

Researchers trawled through the health records of hundreds of thousands of patients and found no statistical link between eating saturated fat and falling ill with heart disease, strokes or type 2 diabetes.

The findings, published in the British Medical Journal, raise further doubts about 32-year-old guidelines that warn people to avoid butter, full-fat milk and other meat and dairy products with high levels of saturated fats.

Britons were advised in 1983 to cut their fat intake to 30 per cent of their total energy, and saturated fat intake to 10 per cent, while increasing the amount of carbohydrates they ate.

But the latest evidence suggests that saturated fats may not be bad for you after all.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).




Tuesday, August 11, 2015


Oklahoma Woman, Drugs, and Children Under 12


Krystal Williams

(Tulsa, Oklahoma) A local woman, Krystal Williams, 29, has been accused of drug charges.
Upon further search of the car, police found a purse belonging to Williams in the floorboard on the passenger side containing marijuana, a pill bottle with 31 Hydrocodone pills and a marijuana grinder, a report states.

Two of Williams’ children were with her in the car, police said.
Williams was arrested and taken to the Tulsa County Jail.

The recent large pivot Leftward of the Democratic party

But why did they move that way?  Because they can.  The American electorate was once economically conservative, so the Democrats matched that to stay in office.  In recent years, however, the rusted-on vote of the minorities gives them a freer hand.   Mitt Romney was a lackluster candidate yet won an amazing 59 percent of the white vote.  It was monolithic minority votes that handed the Presidency to Obama.  So they can now do much more of what they basically want: Control.

“We Democrats believe that our economy can and must grow at an average rate of 5% annually, almost twice as fast as our average annual rate since 1953....We shall bring in added Federal tax revenues by expanding the economy itself.” -- 1960 Democratic Party Platform

“We will continue to use tax policy to maintain steady economic growth by helping through tax reduction to stimulate the economy when it is sluggish.” – 1968 Democratic Party Platform

“We reject ..the big government theory that says we can..tax and spend our way to prosperity..We honor business as a noble endeavor.” -- 1992 Democratic Party Platform

“Today's Democratic Party knows that the era of big government is over. Big bureaucracies and Washington solutions are not the real answers to today's challenges. We need a smaller government.” – 1996 Democratic Party Platform

“We have ended the era of big government; it’s time to end the era of old government…Democrats believe in supporting the startups, the small businesses, and the entrepreneurs that are making the New Economy go.” -- 2000 Democratic Party Platform

“We promise to cut taxes for 98% of Americans…We believe the private sector, not government, is the engine of economic growth and job creation.”  -- 2004 Democratic Party Platform

Up until 2000, Democrats routinely used buzzwords like “tax cuts,” “smaller government,” and “growth” in their platforms,” beginning in the John F. Kennedy era, even through Al Gore’s “reinventing, downsize the government” campaign. Though Democrats kept the caveat that it would resort to higher taxes, as it did in 1960, if the “unfolding demands of the new decade” necessitated them, President John F. Kennedy still cut taxes and famously declared that “a rising tide lifts all boats.”

But since 2008, the Democrats have lost their ideological bearings. The Obama Administration and now Democrat presidential contender Hillary Clinton are pursuing a course the polar opposite of the modus operandi of prior Democratic Administrations, when tax cuts were about igniting growth first, redistribution later. But both Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama continue to put redistribution and big government first at the expense of growth, and end up getting neither.

Both are about raising taxes when the government routinely fails to deliver a budget. For the first time in six years, both houses of Congress last May adopted concurrent budget resolutions, notes FOX News Channel’s information specialist Stephen Scarola, as the federal government continues to mistake emergency stabilization plans to handle the housing crash as growth plans.

And now, Hillary Clinton proposes a mind-boggling capital gains tax plan that involves a half-dozen rates, a plan which nearly doubles the rate for investments held less than six years.

A flip flop from when Mrs. Clinton said of the capital gains tax rate in the 2008 Democrat presidential debates: “I wouldn’t raise it above the 20% if I raised it at all. I would not raise it above what it was during the Clinton Administration.”

We’ve got a U.S. tax code undermining the economy that sits at 77,000 pages, with all the statutes and regulations factored in, at seven times the length of Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” Americans spend 6.1 billion hours every year attempting to comply with the revenue code, at an all in monetary cost of about $168 billion, estimates the Tax Foundation, about the size of Vietnam's GDP.

It’s a tax code written in an incomprehensible tongue and neurotically fiddled with by politicians doing the paid bidding of rent seekers seeking privileges their competitors don’t get. Entire, multi-billion dollar, unproductive industries are built, and wasted, on either complying with the code, or chasing elected officials who dole out tax privileges.

“We will protect the rights of all taxpayers against oppressive procedures, harassment and invasions of privacy by the Internal Revenue Service,” reads the 1976 Democratic Party platform. “At present, many federal government tax and expenditure programs have a profound but unintended and undesirable impact on jobs and on where people and business locate. Tax policies and other indirect subsidies have promoted deterioration of cities and regions. These policies should be reversed.”

However, now both President Obama and Hillary Clinton are about bigger government, even though the economy grew at less than 2% since 2008 and just 1.5% in the first half of 2015, a virtual standstill.

That first half performance is less than half the average growth the U.S. economy experienced, at just over 3%, from World War II to 2007.

This isn’t just the worst growth rate since World War II. It’s the worst rate of growth since the modern concept of GDP was first developed in 1934. When about half the time from 1950 to 2000, 4% growth was the norm. Most every recession since World War II saw higher economic growth, including the cataclysmic 1981 recession that saw a severe banking collapse when big money center banks, including Citibank (C), faced insolvency due to Latin American debt crisis.

That 3% growth rate would toss off another $600 billion in annual economic growth, estimates show, which would mean more jobs and higher incomes.

Today we’ve got a federal government whose spending annually equates to about 24% of GDP, up from the 19% average from 1950 to 2000. That’s a lot of capital sucked out of the private markets away from job-creating entrepreneurs who could develop the next, hot technology or medical cures, capital for the politicians to use instead to pick and choose how it’s deployed.

Taxpayers continue to pay for federal waste, anywhere from $125 billion to $200 billion, due to duplicative spending, even after the Government Accountability Office, Congress‘ official watchdog, made 440 recommendations since 2009 for cut backs in 180 areas. Less than a third, 29%, of the GAO’s recommendations were fully addressed.

This, as the 2008 Democratic platform said the party would be all about “eliminating waste in existing government programs” and “pay as you go budgeting rules.”

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).


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