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“Maryland Shall Issue” Kicks Derriere

21 Sep

Yesterday’s e-mail brought welcome news from the good people at Maryland Shall Issue.  The organization dedicated to the preservation and advancement of gun owners’ rights in Maryland had filed a lawsuit against the Maryland State Police to force them to follow the law and protect the confidential personal information that law abiding gun owners are forced to submit to the state.  Just before the case went to court, the state police admitted their wrongdoing and changed their procedures.  MSI writes:

Today we can say with certainty that the State Police exposed the information of tens of thousands of its citizens over an open and unsecured internet link. This data traversed multiple systems and routers on its path through the internet, none of which were controlled by the state. All it took was one single transaction in any one system to be intercepted, for the entirety of the 77R database to be compromised. The state had no controls in place to prevent it, and no audit in place to even know if it happened. Computer security experts agree: the State Police violated nearly every common sense safeguard that should be used to protect private information. Your name and social security number could be sitting on a hacker’s website right now, and the State Police cannot even detect that it was stolen.

The simple truth is that the State Police violated the trust of the people, the lawmakers and the media. Given the chance, they obfuscated and denied. Yet again, the only thing that forced them to change their ways was a lawsuit and the threat of legal sanction.

This story demonstrates, yet again, that government can’t be trusted to obey the law.

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Posted by on September 21, 2013 in Maryland Politics

 

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Outdoor Classroom a Gimmick

21 Sep

One constant feature of modern education is the endless time and money spent on every kind of untested new thing that is supposed to improve learning.  The latest example of this appears in a Gazette column by Sophie Petit.

The PTA at an elementary school in Bowie has just built an outdoor classroom “with no walls or roof or chairs.”  The classroom will be used for all subjects, not just outdoor subjects like botany or biology, and the children will supposedly learn more because of the outdoorsy openness.

Of course it’s a good thing that this school has a garden.  And it’s an even better thing that it was paid for with funds raised by the PTA and not squeezed from taxpayers.  But the idea that children learn better without walls is absurd.  In fact, we know this isn’t true because this theory of education has already been tried.  Classrooms without walls were all the rage in the 1970’s, and large sums of money were spent building entire schools based on the untested (and implausible) idea that students would learn better without privacy and quiet.  The new schools didn’t work.  Students didn’t learn because they couldn’t focus, and teachers couldn’t teach because they couldn’t be heard.  So large amounts of additional money had to be spent to retrofit those foolishly fashionable school buildings with walls so academic work could actually be done.

We should have learned from that experience, but now the idea that a classroom without walls or a roof will be an improvement is back.  Eager to do anything to improve education, we are duped by the same gimmicks over and over again.

And if the return of an old education gimmick isn’t frightening enough, then brace yourself for what Kevin Maxwell, the new superintendent of Prince George’s County Public Schools, had to say about it.  He said the new outdoor classroom would “raise environmental awareness among students” and educate “our children on what they need to do.”

Yikes.  This is nothing but politics in the classroom.  It’s exactly what a good school should never do.

Modern environmental issues are politically controversial, from global warming to recycling.  Students who are too young to learn about these controversies are not ready to have their “environmental awareness” raised.  And any attempt to do this is not an education; it’s just propaganda.  The superintendent admits as much when he says the goal for this classroom is to get the young students to act on these teachings.

While we can be glad that the PTA did the hard work to build a pretty garden for the students at this elementary, let’s insist that the political activism be left for the college campus and get the elementary students back inside a classroom with walls and a roof where they can focus their attention on the subjects they really need to master.

 
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Posted by on September 21, 2013 in Education

 

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Governor Perry Coming to Accokeek

17 Sep

The Washington Post reports that Texas Governor Rick Perry will be stopping by the Berreta facility in Accokeek tomorrow.  Perry is trying to persuade the longtime Maryland gun manufacturer to move from hostile Maryland to friendly Texas.  It would be a shame to lose Berreta, but it’s understandable why they would leave.

Of course, the stupidly biased Washington Post has to include a laughable irrelevancy to take a dig at Perry.  John Wagner writes, “Perry, who has been on similar poaching missions to several other states, plans a stop at a Beretta USA facility in Accokeek, just south of Washington, where a gunman went on a rampage at the Navy Yard on Monday, an aide confirmed Tuesday.”

The deranged killer who terrorized the people at the Navy Yard had nothing to do with Governor Perry or Maryland’s absurd anti-gun laws.  There’s no reason to include that information in this story other than to try and link the two.  The irony is that the killer was stopped by a powerful gun.  Had there been more people at the Navy Yard with Berreta pistols, he probably would have been stopped sooner.  But that fact is lost on the statists at the Washington Post.

 
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Posted by on September 17, 2013 in Current Events

 

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When Everyone is Advanced, No One Is

16 Sep

Jay Mathews has an article in the Washington Post today about a “daring” school in Arlington that requires all students to take “at least one AP or International Baccalaureate course and test.”  He begins with the story of two freshmen who wanted to drop their AP class because it was too hard.  The principal refused.  In the end, the students “stayed and did well in the course.”  It was a story to warm the Birkenstocks on any lefty dreamer.

But there’s a problem with forcing everyone to take AP classes.  If everyone takes the advanced class, then it’s no longer an advanced class.  In fact, the only way to get everyone through the advanced class is to dumb it down for the weakest students.  Children understand this.  But adults, for some reason, convince themselves that everyone can be above average.  If only we spend more money.

Matthews continues the story about the daring school by quoting the AP teacher who said that  “the point was not to pass the AP exam but to improve her students’ reading, writing and debating skills.”

That’s all well and good for the underperforming students.  Their reading skills probably need to be improved.  But this is terrible news for the high performing students who already have excellent reading and writing skills.  They’re in the AP class to prepare for the exam, and we owe it to them to do everything possible to get them ready for that test.  If these students aren’t being challenged to prepare for what their teacher dismisses as a mere “testing opportunity,” then they’re being cheated.

AP classes are for advanced students who need to prepare for an exam, and social engineering experiments have no place there.  Rather than redefining the AP class, the school should raise the standards in its regular class to improve the “reading, writing and debating skills” of those students who will not be taking the AP exam.

 
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Posted by on September 16, 2013 in Education

 

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“Elysium” – A Mindless Formula Flick

10 Sep

I wanted to see this movie because it had been written and directed by Neill Blomkamp, the same writer and director who made “District 9.”  I enjoyed “District 9,” not because it was a great film, but because it was original.  At no point in the story did I know what to expect or who was going to survive.  The actors were not famous.  In fact, for actors, they were kind of ugly, and that made them credible.  And the story was built on a tough universal truth that we often neglect:  Many of our society’s problems have no solution, not just no easy solution, but no solution at all.  All we can do is make miserable compromises that are unfair and unsatisfactory.

So with the hope that “Elysium” would be another thoughtful original, we piled into the car and set out for the new Xscape movie theater in Brandywine.  I was sorely disappointed.  (And at $10 a ticket, it was an expensive disappointment.)  My menfolk were not so disappointed.  They enjoyed the mindless blasting and thought I was too tough in my assessment.  But they did laugh with me at my criticism.  As usual, my arguments were irrefutable.

“Elysium” is a boring, blow-em-away formula film.  The story illuminates the universal truth (sarcasm alert) that rich people are bad and poor people are good.  It also highlights the political truth (sarcasm alert) that fabulous universal healthcare is easy to provide.  All we have to do is push a button, and fabulous free healthcare for all will appear.  And the only reason we haven’t pushed the button is that mean rich people don’t want us to.

The characters in this movie are as thin as paper.  I asked my young companions to tell me about the leading lady.  One immediately answered, “She’s a b—-.”  Of course.  But where is she from?  What does she want and why?  Whom does she love?  What does she fear?  They began to laugh because they could see my point.

And finally, I dislike watching big name celebrities in movies.  I find it distracting.  I kept thinking about how old Jodie Foster looks.  Yeah, she looks great, but I remember her as a child.  And I clearly remember her as Clarice in “The Silence of the Lambs.”  How can I slip into the world of the current movie when the famous faces keep drawing me back to other stories?

 
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Posted by on September 10, 2013 in Movies

 

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WaPo Erases Obama’s Prior Words

10 Sep

When Barack Obama was trying to sell his massive government-run health care plan, he repeatedly made exaggerated, untrue claims.  He told us that if we liked our current plan, we could keep it.  He told us that if we liked our doctor, we could keep her.  People are slowly waking up to the fact that the President made wild promises that he couldn’t possible keep.

The Washington Post is learning this too, but they are very careful to forget about Obama’s earlier promises in the hope that their readers will too.  On Monday the Post ran an article about a free clinic in Arlington that uses a lottery system to award lucky patients thousands of dollars of free services.  It explains the public’s misperception about the extent of Obamacare’s coverage with the following words:

“Some might think the lottery’s days are numbered, given that the insurance expansion under President Obama’s health-care law is taking effect in January.”

Silly people who think Obama’s healthcare plan provides universal coverage!  Where did they get that idea?

People think everybody will be covered by the law, because that’s what the President promised.  Here he is in his January 2010 SOTU:

“But if anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down
premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for
seniors, and stop insurance company abuses, let me know.”

He didn’t say “cover some of the uninsured;” he said “cover the uninsured.”  He said this over and over, along with all of the other false promises.  The insurance plans we liked have been changed.  Some of our doctors have quit.  The deficit has ballooned, and Medicare has been raided to pay for Obamacare.  Nothing he promised has come true.

It’s time to hold him accountable for his promises, Washington Post.

 
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Posted by on September 10, 2013 in Politics

 

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Herbivore Terrorism

10 Sep
Demise of a Mum

Demise of a Mum

Everyone knows that deer eat mums, so I never plant them in my deer-infested yard. Instead, I plant them in pots on my deck one floor above the ground. I was surprised to discover this newly planted mum completely destroyed. It couldn’t have been eaten by a deer. A deer would have had to climb a flight of stairs to get to it and wouldn’t have left all the flower heads strewn about. No, this mum was destroyed by a squirrel.

UPDATE:  Konabianca, handbagged by her science-loving son, is chastened.  Squirrels are not herbivores.  They sometimes eat birds; they are omnivores.

 
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Posted by on September 10, 2013 in Home Life

 

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