Contra Mozilla

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Coach Mack Brown and His Replacement

It's been a few days since Mack Brown resigned as head coach. He was apparently offered the opportunity to remain as head coach, so I guess that vindicates my predictions from an earlier set of posts: namely, that he would only be brought back if he went at least 9-4 with a win over OU or 10-3 without one (this was the day before and the Monday after the Red River Rivalry game), and that even at 9-4 with the win over OU he might not return. And of course, DeLoss Dodds did step down, though it's not Mack Brown who has replaced him.

Before going into the "who will be the new coach" speculation, it's worth reading this letter of support written by one of his former players:
But I’m writing this to tell you that what happened on the field that night is not what made an impact on an 18-year-old Chris Hall. It wasn’t the last-second touchdown Vince Young scored or the celebration in the stadium afterward. What has stayed with me these eight years were the words Coach Brown spoke to us in the the locker room: “Don’t let this be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.”

Coach Brown could have told us many things. Of course he congratulated us. Of course he was proud of us. He told us we were champions and that nobody could ever take that away from us. All those things were true. But he emphasized what was important. He knew the men in that locker room wouldn’t always be football players. So he told us to not let this be the best thing that ever happened to us, but to go on to be great fathers, great husbands, and great citizens.
We do need more coaches who are class acts of this sort. No, Texas has not been free of its student-athlete-related problems. Yes, a few of the football players have even run afoul of the law at times: there is, unfortunately, some of that at most major university football programs. Even Oregon State has had some off-field issues, and that's with Mr Class Act himself as head coach. The players from the team who have come through the classes I've taught have been reasonably good student-citizens (though many would not exactly count as good scholars), certainly better than the basketball players I've had (both men and women: I haven't yet had one who's come through and been a genuine pleasure to have in class, or really even a very good citizen).

As to who will replace him: I would hope for somebody who cares about being a leader for the team both on and off the field, but I don't know much about the latter for most coaches. I've seen a variety of lists (it seems that with Saban out of the way, there are something like 30 possible replacements, some more serious than others, not counting some of the names on this amusing UT Coaching Bracket). Most of the names I mentioned in my earlier post are still viable or sem-viable candidates. I mentioned Chip Kelly as one good one to hold out for--this before he was on any lists--and lo and behold we find him as a potential replacement (though now an unlikely one, since he's actually doing pretty well in the NFL). I also like Jim Harbaugh if they can get him, though I suspect he would be relatively short-term (as Saban would have been).

There is one name which is conspicuously absent from every single list I've seen so far: David Cutcliffe. I'd call his achievement at Duke to be at least comparable to James Franklin's at Vanderbilt, even if it took him a few more years to get there. Then again, Art Briles didn't exactly become a big coaching commodity by building up Baylor overnight. Whoever the new coach is, he might consider hiring Gene Chizik as (co?) defensive coordinator, or alternatively waiting another year for Will Muschamp to get canned from Florida before bringing him back. Greg Robinson has done ok, but he's not been quite as good either time around as either of those guys were.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

On Winning the Lottery

My wife and I were talking about winning the lottery (we didn't actually win it, of course, unless you count winning $4 for a $1 ticket)--and joking about it, too--and it seems that we aren't the only ones. In the last year or so, it seems the Mega Million and Pwerball lotteries (but I repeat myself) have frequently boasted jackpots in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Several times the jackpot has exceeded half a billion bucks. Yikes!

We are apparently not alone in these musings, as Rebecca Hamilton shares her own thoughts on this on her blog. I mostly concur with her, and actually would put the money to a very similar use (exchange Austin for Oklahoma city, and I would probably build up some nice chapels etc around the state and/or country and staff them with Dominicans; donate a bunch to the Sister of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist (they've set up shop nearby), and I would probably try to set up some sort of small trust for my children (current and future). Oh, and eliminate that student loan debt.

One of the more thought-provoking points brought up by Mrs. Hamilton is this:

The amount of money that was on the line in the lottery yesterday — hundreds of millions of dollars — was beyond my comprehension. My husband told me that if we won it, we’d have to move and go incognito for our own safety.
My reaction to that was thank you, but no. That doesn’t sound like a gift. It sounds like a sentence.
My home/family/community give my life structure. This is my place, my spot in the world. What could money possibly give me to compensate for losing that?

She concludes by asking if winning the lottery would be a blessing, or a sentence.

Something similar crossed my own mind in thinking about this: would it be a blessing, or a curse to suddenly acquire that much wealth? For some, it would surely be a blessing, and many more would echo Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis:
Ask the rich man he'll confess
Money can't buy happiness
Ask the poor man he don't doubt
But he'd rather be miserable with than without
For me, I think that winning that much money suddenly would be a curse. It would be another "talent" to steward, and I don't think I would do that. It's not something I want to be answerable for some day--have I used this vast fortune wisely? Some men would be able to, and some certainly do. There's nothing wrong with having a fortune, so long as it is used (invested, donated, etc) wisely. And I may be able to do so.

I'm also certainly at a different stage of life and in a different financial state than Mrs. Hamilton. I don't know that I would want $636 million to worry about, but I wouldn't mind seeing tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt disappear, or of seeing a few hundred thousand big ones appear in a retirement account for my wife and myself; it's not that this would make me quit my day job, but rather would let me pursue a job which would pay less but carry more satisfaction (like teaching, or thinking and writing, and not merely about physics).

Winning enough money to wipe out debts and afford a house or put away for retirement would be nice, and I think I could manage that. But enough to buy a neighborhood is also more than I could really fathom. Though the temptation to buy an island somewhere and to leave the country before things get any worse s strong...


OFA's Awful "Talking" Ad

There's not really any other way to describe Organize For America's (@BarackObama on Twitter) new ad. It's just as classless as the last round, and is again urging people to hijack the holidays to sell Obamacare. This time, they're using a nearly-adrogynous racially neutral onesie-wearing douche bag of a model.

He looks to be young, meaning part of the target demographic of folks who are (or were) enthralled by Obama's razzle-dazzle campaign-bedazzle bullshit. There are really three things which come to mind which others have said, and one more which I would add.

  • Everything about the ad screams "douchebag." I mean, really: plaid onesie pajamas? Discussing serious issues (however much Obama et al. may be treating healthcare reform as a joke, it is serious) with supposedly serious grown men while sitting around in pajamas? The hot chocalate thing is fine, I guess, if taken on its own. But the rest makes the thing laughable at best.
  • This is, moreover, another attempt by Obama (et al.) to place himself (and his policies) at the center of the holidays. Because you know, the holidays are about serving the party and celebrating the dear leader, not about spending time with family or celebrating traditions (religious or otherwise) or anything so unhip as that. It's an ongoing trend with Obama, everything's about him.
  • If Obamacare had done a better job of selling itself, we wouldn't even need to spend the holidays trying to sell it for him. The complete top-down incompetence in implementing the websites and exchanges is a part of the problem, as is the fact that he has been a) lying and b) changing the rules of the game since day one. However, even that is only a part of the problem, since Obamacare itself would be aweful without those problems.
  • My own observation: I notice that the age of the guy in the ad appears to be young(ish?). It's hard to get a good estimate, based on his lack of distinction from "generic guy/gal", but I would guess 20-something [edit: over 26, as some have pointed out]. Well, with the way Obama's economy has been treating 20-somethings, I guess that many of them really do have nothing better to do this winter than sit around in pajamas and drink hot chocalate. It's not like many people in this age group have full-time jobs to go to.

2017 cannot arrive soon enough.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Fake Job References, Real Job Problems

Daily Dot has a story up about a guy who makes a living by providing fake job references. He apparently puts some serious effort into it, designing websites and even LinkedIn profiles for the fake companies and then matching them to a person's desired career. He apparently also goes through the trouble of providing phone references, though he tries to stick to email because it's easier to keep the story straight (Mark Twain is nodding in his grave).

The article leaves the ethics of this as ambiguous, and of course there are certain risks (including for one the risk of termination and a lawsuit if a company should find out that it's been lied to). With that said, it's nice to see somebody finding another way of sticking it to the hiring agencies and HR departments. Too many companies seem to believe that their entry-level jobs should have the qualifications of a degree and several years' experience: this for the kind of positions which once might have been had direct from high school or at least direct from college.

In many fields, an entry-level job becomes available only after having obtained an expensive college degree and undergone some (oftentimes) unpaid or underpaid internships ("to gain some job experience" of course). Any company which makes those kinds of its employees deserves any curve-balls which come its way.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Some Links About Story

A few quick links about story and story-telling, mostly science fiction. The first come from Ace of Spades, who is talking about the sense-of-wonder which should be included in any good science fiction (or fantasy) story. This, in the context of the Godzilla remake:
I'm always wondering to myself: Where, when they were writing the script, did they expect a 10 year old boy (or the 10 year old boy in all of us, including in women) to go, "Wowww...!!!"
The only Wow factor they're offering CGI Cartoon shit happening faster and bigger.
This reminds me of why Metallica stopped playing speed metal. They realized that the competition in speed metal had simply become unidimensional -- it was simply to play things faster, and then faster, and then faster still, and then, when that got boring, to try playing things even faster.
What is the endpoint of that, they wondered? Is that a competition worth winning?
CGI hasn't had the effect of liberating filmmakers' imaginations -- it has had quite the opposite effect. CGI promises, they think, a guaranteed payoff: We'll just make our cartoons bigger, louder, and faster than they were last time, with more pixels and more texture-shading, and there you go. Art has been made.
But Bigger, Louder, Faster is a creative ditch just like speed metal's Faster Faster Faster....

And I don't care about Godzilla at all. I'm not a child. I don't care about giant monsters knocking about cities. I've seen this before.
In the last ten years, I've seen this kind of thing about 35 times now.
And blog favorite John C Wright continues his discussion of strong female characters, also in the context of science fiction and fantasy. I forget how many of these I linked the last time, so here's part 5, and here's part 6. Part 6 is especially worth the read. Instead of quoting some passages which are representative of the whole, I give these two nuggets from part 6:
"More truth is held in the pages of trashy romance novels than in all the worthless books penned by college professors."
"I read with some skeptical bitterness that when neurologists first started publicly admitting that there were neurochemical differences in brain structure between males and females, Gloria Steinem said that social conditioning could overcome this innate genetic predilections. I understand that the Left also says that homosexual attraction is caused by innate genetic predilections, but that to use any form of social conditioning to overcome such predilections is illegal in California. Consistency is not the strong suit of the Left."
Indeed. Here is a more representative passage:
The story logic requires that if a superheroine falls for a guy, he has to be virile and potent in relation to her, in some way her superior, so that she has something she thinks is sexy to admire and adore; and likewise she, even if she is physically stronger and shows directness and leadership and cooks outdoors and has great clumps of underarm hair and in every way is masculine and manly, she has to be shown as devoted, because fidelity is what sexually attracts men to women.
The old cliché of rescuing a damsel in distress is based on the idea that a woman rescued from danger by a man will be devoted to him, because ingratitude in such life or death situations was unthinkable, particularly for an admirable female lead.
Again, the logic of Political Correctness requires that men and women not be complementary because the concept of complementary strengths and weakness is not a concept that Political Correctness can admit, lest it be destroyed. The concept of complementary virtues undermines the concept of envy, and Political Correctness is nothing but politicized fury based on politicized envy. We can define Political Correctness as the attempt to express fury and envy via radical changes to legal and social institutions.






Saturday, December 7, 2013

BCS Chaos Scenarios

The BCS--and the playoff which replaces it--is about giving the people what they don't want.

It seems to me that there are several scenarios for the BCS Championship. Actually, both Sports Illustrated and ESPN came up with the same 4 (ESPN had more, however):
  1. OSU and FSU win today and place for the BCS national championship
  2. OSU and FSU win today, but Auburn jumps OSU and so FSU and Aubrun play for the championship.
  3. OSU loses and so FSU plays the winner of Missouri/Auburn for the national champinship
  4. OSU and FSU lose, so Auburn and Alabama stage a rematch of the national championship
Apparently, OSU, FSU, and Auburn all losing isn't a viable outcome, nor is OSU winning but FSU losing. Neither, apparently, is a split championship, between (for example) an undefeated OSU getting left out and a 1-loss Auburn beating FSU. For example: OSU, FSU, and Auburn all win today, but then OSU gets left out and wins the Rose bowl by a lot. Alabama loses it bowl game, and Auburn edges FSU. The voters sheepishly realize that OSU was better than their schedule permitted (the only two games they played even close so far are against 10-2 Wisconsin and rival Michigan), and that Auburn last-second win over Alabama is less impressive than it appeared (all far-fetched, but possible).

So how does this tie into the 4-team play-off? The very strong implication is that in this year, the four teams would be FSU, OSU, Auburn/Mizzou winner, and Alabama.So there are no aggrieved teams under those rules, right?

Wrong. For one, suppose that Oklahoma State and/or Baylor wins today, and in so doing finishes 11-1. "They played a weak schedule." Perhaps, but is it weaker than the schedules of FSU and OSU, or for that matter Missouri (assuming they win)? Oklahoma State will have beaten an 11-1 Baylor team, a 9-3 Oklahoma team, and an 8-4 Texas team which had improved dramatically since its first two losses (after which they replaced their inept defensive coordinator with a rather better one). Ohio State will have beaten an 11-2 MSU squad and a 10-2 Wisconsin team, and an 8-4 Iowa team. FSU will have beaten a 10-3 Duke team, a 10-2 Clemson team, and a decent 9-3 Miami team. Missouri will have beaten an 11-2 Auburn team and a 10-2 South Carolina team, and an 8-4 Texas A&M squad. And are these 1-loss teams all really better than say Stanford or ASU, who have played two of the toughest schedules in the country?

The 4-team playoff is supposed to be better because, supposed, the #5 team isn't quite as deserving as the #3 team to play for a championship. Perhaps, and perhaps not. The actual result will be that the #5 team is ignored (as the #3 team often is now), when the #5 team might easily beat any of the teams ranked ahead of it (I think of the 2008 USC team which would most likely have clobbered Texas, Oklahoma, Alabama, and even Florida, and which did clobber both the Ohio State which took Texas to the wire in the Fiesta Bowl and Penn State, which was the #6 or 7 team that year).

This could be resolved by either going to an 8-team play-off (5 conference winners from the major conferences plus 3 at-large and no more than 2 from any conference) or a 4-team play-off with only conference champions allowed. An alternative, I suppose, would be the multi-team system I proposed in an earlier post. The playoff we'll have simply isn't going to improve things.

The good news is that NIU lost, so maybe the PAC-12 will get that second BCS team in.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Quick Link: World Cup Draw

Apparently, whoever was in charge of the first round draws for the world cup hates the US. Talk about a tough group: besides the US, it's Germany, Portugal, and Ghana (the team that's eliminated us from the last two world cups). Yikes.

Go figure that both France and Mexico would get easy draws.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

GoldieBlox and the Three Mares

When I first saw the GoldieBlox "Princess Machine" ad, my initial reaction was, I'm not going to buy anything from these guys for my daughter. This is because I saw the original version with the parody of Beastie Boys "Girls". This version has disappeared, apparently because the Beastie Boys began inquiring as to why their material was used without their permission. Meanwhile, GoldieBlox reaction has been to sue Beastie Boys over this inquiry.

This is all basically in the background of my mind, actually. It's a bit classless for GoldieBlox to go about it this way, but that's not really where my complaints lay. Rather, I took exception to the parody lyrics (and their implications--I've empasized some):
Girls. You think you know what we want, girls
Pink and pretty it’s girls.
Just like the 50’s it’s girls.
You like to buy us pink toys
And everything else is for boy
And you can always get us dolls
And we’ll grow up like them... false.
It’s time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
‘Cause all our toys look just the same

And we would like to use our brains.
We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
That they can engineer that.Girls.
That’s all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it’s Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don’t underestimate Girls.

For crying out loud, I know that these lyrics are making fun of a song about girls being treated as nothing more than "maids", though they're really also making fun of housewives, stay-at-home moms, home-makers.
Girls!
You deserve better
Girls!
Than thinly veiled whining
Girls!
About the old patriarchy
Girls!
And an imagined glass ceiling.

Note the insinuation, "That's all we really need is Girls." Boys are not needed, we can dispense with men. This may not be the intention of the company or the ad, but in a society which is saturated with this message, that is what comes across. The further insinuation that women who choose not to pursue engineering careers--or really any careers--but rather to embrace the vocation of home-maker and mother to the exclusion of other careers don't use their brains is, well, demeaning to say the least.

The commercial itself was really not too bad, though. With the lyrics removed, it's actually pretty well-done, and exactly the kind of thing I'd like to do with my children when they are old enough to appreciate it:




Well, other than perhaps the fact that all three girls look very bored with their pretty-princess show. That kind of thing would probably bore some girls. Others really like it--and it's not a matter of just "gender-socializing" or some other psycho-babble nonsense. Indeed, my (rather progressive) sister once commented to me that her daughters had socialized themselves to like the whole Cinderella/Disney-princess/dolls thing. Actually, the look of the three girls at the beginning is less bored than angry, which I suppose fits the attitude of feminists the world over.

It's just unfortunate that the approach to this is, "We don't need boys!" which reads a lot like "Up with womyn, down with men!" in our cultural milieu. Similarly with the attitude that traditional "girl toys" (and by extension, feminine gender roles) do not require a functioning brain. There are no "mere" housewives, and nobody is "just a mother."

Anyway, my children currently consist of a baby daughter. She's not old enough to play with these kinds of things (they tend to present a choking hazard at her age), but I have big plans for science/engineering exploration with her (her mother, on the other hand, plans to do the same with music). The fact that this company felt the need to turn me off to its products would seem to be rather unfortunate for them, and it unfortunate for us too. I like the idea of my little girls getting into engineering and science (more fun for me, too!), but not at the expense of their femininity. Certainly, not at the price of having some chip on her shoulder against the men in her field, if she does some day decide to go the STE route. To be blunt, that's a true mark of equality between the sexes: when women can enter the field without having a chip of their shoulders against their male colleagues--and when men can look at these women as partners and not merely rivals. Ads like the one first put forth by GoldieBlox do not help to accomplish this.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Manic Monday Musings--A Few Short Thoughts after a Long Weekend

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I don't like being a grad student, but I really hate the constant pressure being placed on me to get results. My equipment--which I get a turn on once every month or so--is constantly breaking through no fault of my own. I can't conjure a working experiment from non-working equipment. Meanwhile, every other aspect of my life is suffering from work-life imbalance. Hence, few updates here. Here are a few thoughts that I haven't time to expand on now.

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The secular-minded folks would conflate evangelizing with marketing. They might throw in proselytizing for good measure, or perhaps suggest that proselytism is to a person's religion what marketing is to a person's spending habits, and that evangelism is the same thing as proselytism. Um, no. It's even more disturbing when Church leaders make this mistake, however.

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Given that "settled science" sometimes undergoes paradigm shifts, it becomes foolish to base defenses of perennial truths on it. Since philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and ultimately the pursuit of these perennial truths from the vehicle of human reasoning, philosophy itself cannot be based only on science*--which might fairly be true even under the older meaning of science as "knowledge." It needs a firmer foundation than science can offer, which may also be why scientists are often such poor philosophers. He who marries the spirit of this age finds himself widowed (or more often than not divorced) in the next age.

*Based only on science: I mean here science as only human "knowledge," which may be disproven and is generally incomplete. Of course, since human knowledge is generally incomplete, we have to work with what we have, but I have seen a few philosophical arguments--even professionally published ones--which hinge ultimately on scientific "facts" which have turned out to not be so factual.

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The publish or perish mentality has done more to undermine the academic enterprise--to say nothing of the concept of a liberal education--than most more "systems" or ideologies could ever hope to achieve. The problem of publish or perish is an insistence on newness or (worse) novelty, which does not necessarily mean mastery of the subject at hand. I think it will also be the death of science as such.

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Meanwhile, we're slowly replacing science with engineering, and then replacing sound engineering with mere technology. This won't end well. And furthermore, computer science is not one of the natural sciences.

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The Black Friday Rule is this: the day after we pretend to be thankful for what we have, we go out and attempt to add to it. Because nothing says "gratitude" like consumerism and the desire for more stuff.


Wednesday, November 27, 2013

A Thought About Lena Dunham

Lena Dunham is an actress in the classical sense.

It's a shame that she is viewed by so many as being the "voice" of my generation. To be fair, she does seem to be the embodiment of the zeitgeist.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Quick Links: On Strong Female Protagonists

NPR does a nice job of explaining why I can't really get into the whole Hunger Games series: the strong female lead is made at the price of any real men. I have nothing against strong female characters--a well-written one can be the best part of a story. Unfortunately, it seems to me that Hollywood (and others, really, anyone under the thrall of feminist theory) can't create a strong female character without surrounding her by comparatively weak male characters. To be fair, there are plenty of older movies (and stories) which focus on a single strong male character with weak (or insignificant) female characters. But this seems like a self-conscious attempt to "make up" for those types of stories.

Elsewhere, John C Wright has been writing down his thoughts on strong female characters. He (and his wife, for that matter) has written stories which incorporate these without somehow making the men look weak, small, stupid, or useless. It can be done with a some effort and a little talent.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Demotivators

Always good fora quick laugh or a small dose of reality. Now available in Illboard format.

Although, they are entirely too kind to the president.

Friday, November 22, 2013

Quick Links: Another Day, Another Damning Expose' of Academia

This one is by Al Jazeera. Academia in America--like so many other things which are being run for short-term benefit--is completely unsustainable. I am pretty much ready to finish this 8-year ordeal known as my Ph.D. and move on with my life. Here's hoping that moving on doesn't involve becoming an adjunct somewhere.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Weekend Finds and Musings

Some happenings, findings, and musings from the last week:

  1. I took my wife and daughter to Chinatown (Austin) last weekend. I had kind of forgotten--despite being surrounded by Chinese folks in my lab--about Chinatown. It would more accurately be called SE Asia-Town, but that doesn't role off the tongue quite as well: most of the stores in that little area (really, an extended strip-mall) are actually Vietnamese. In any case, we visited one such place, "Short and Sweet," to buy some smoothies. The whole store, it turns out, exists to raise profits for a charity called "Peter's Clinic," which looks like an excellent little charity. They are apparently trying to build clinics (pro-family, for children, with doctors and pharmacists) in Vietnam to help the poor there. Better still, they have an affiliation with the Dominican sisters in the area. Consider donating to this, if you're looking for a charity.
  2. Professor J Budziszewski has a website and a blog. He sent me an email with links and then said "feel free to share," so here you all go. Professor Budziszewski is a convert from atheism and nihilism to Catholicism and Natural Law. A lot of his writings have to do with conscience (and its inescapability), and he is one of the kindest people and best professors I've ever met. He's also a pretty good speaker, and many of his books are published by ISI (one of my favorite organizations).
  3. Sports musing: now that Texas has been blown out at home in conference, their chances of winning the Big12 are all but shot. Nevertheless, it would be an interesting scenario for them to beat Baylor (a longshot, but interesting), assuming that Oklahoma State also picks up another loss, such that UT wins the conference and goes to the Fiesta Bowl. They would presumably be favored over whoever they face there (likely UCF), but I wonder--if they then get upset in that game, they will have the same 9-4 record as last year. Do they then fire Mack Brown for the record, or keep him on for winning the conference? The fans are mostly back to clamoring to see him fired (even if the Longhorns actually do win the next two), and they'll only get louder when he loses to Baylor.
  4. Second sports musing: it seems to me that USC's big win ends up hurting at least one of two conferences in the bowl games. The first is the Pac12, which will almost certainly not get a second BCS bowl game despite being arguably the deepest conference in the country. The second is probably the B1G, which is all but guaranteed one BCS bowl now, unless Michigan State springs a massive upset in their conference championship game (a suddenly 1-loss OSU team becomes a big possibility for an at-large birth). Stanford fans now need to root for Oregon State and/or Arizona to beat the Ducks--or for Fresno State and probably NIU to pick up a loss apiece before the season's end. Or, they can put conference strength aside and root for South Carolina to beat Clemson--and hope that Ohio State and Baylor win out.
  5. A nice relaxing weekend taketh away the stress and frustration of a miserable week at work. Sadly, my graduate student career of late has had few nice relaxing weekends and many long and frustrating weeks. I can't finish my project/dissertation/defense soon enough.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Rant: Obamacare and Schadenfreude

Jonah Goldberg's latest at National Review is a delight to read. Some will say that we are rejoicing over others' suffering. I am not rejoicing over the suffering of those who have seen their premium skyrocket and their policies get cancelled. Granted, a large number (a majority, perhaps?) can certainly be said to have brought it on themselves--they did, after all, vote to re-elect Barack Obama to the Presidency and a Democratic Party majority in the Senate. Lesson learned? Perhaps, perhaps not. We'll see what 2014 brings.

But no, this set of just deserts is not the cause of conservative glee. I'm certainly sorry even for those who were duped into voting for Obama, and even for those who continue to insist that it still wasn't a mistake to re-elect him. I don;t want them to suffer, I just want them to not be in power, since they generally make bad decisions which the rest of us have to live with.

Here is the real source of conservative glee in all of this:
As a matter of public policy and fiscal health, this is a mixed bag. It’s good that poor sick people without insurance coverage are getting something. On the other side of the scale, we have the fact that the country is racing toward entitlement-fueled bankruptcy. So if you can overlook that, yippee!
But as a political and ideological matter, this is beyond fantastic. For years we’ve been told that Democrats were more “reality-based,” that “facts have a liberal bias,” in the words of Paul Krugman, and that if they could just have their way, they could fix all of our problems. No one represented this arrogant promise more than Barack Obama himself. But, with an irony so rich it would be made of Corinthian leather if it was a car seat, the only way he could get his signature legislation passed was to baldly and brazenly lie about it, over and over and over again. He created a rhetorical cloud castle where no one would lose his insurance, every family would save thousands of dollars, and millions of the uninsured would suddenly get coverage. Anyone who doubted this was called a fool or a liar, or even a racist. It was, in the parlance of liberalism, a “false choice” to assert that Obamacare couldn’t be a floor wax and a dessert topping.

It is indeed a very Christian sentiment, "How the haughty are brought low" (Isaiah 2:17, 5:15; Luke 1:52). And I can think of few people in living memory more haughty than President Obama, and to a lesser extent his enablers and their supporters. How many times during the "#Shutdown" were we told that Republicans just wanted to take Obamacare hostage by delaying it? That they should be made to kneel like good subjects before the throne of Barack Almighty, kiss his ring, and beg his forgiveness for opposing the Obamacare Bill?

And now, scarcely a month and a half later, all we are hearing from the Democrats in Congress is that we need some sort of delay for Obamacare. Suddenly they're suggesting that maybe we should hold off on the whole thing until it myriad "bugs"--a euphemism for the various unfortunate features and predictable if unintentional bad effects--can be fixed. That very suggestion was actually called "racist" when Republicans were making it.

My suggestion is that we scrap the whole damn thing, starting with the worthless and tyrannical HHS mandate, and nearly equally tyrannical though apparently Constitutional individual mandate. If we're going to require everyone to have healthcare insurance, we could at least be sensible in what we require the healthcare plans to cover--big and unexpected costs, emergency services (for true emergencies), perhaps a check-up/physical once per year. The rest should be at best optional. And if we're going to admit that the purpose the Obamacare is to subsidize debauchery and hedonism for Millenials (and beyond), that we should scrap the whole thing. It really is reasonable and fair to make people dig into their "beer money" to buy their own contraceptives, whether at $9/month (the actual cost) or $18k over 4 years (the claimed cost).

Then there's the fact that many American have lost their insurance--the insurance that they largely chose for themselves--to Obamacare in spite of the president's "promise" (really an outright lie) to the contrary:


The president and his administration have doubled down on this lie by first claiming that he "misspoke" when he made this promise, that he had never really made this promise. When he realized that people have a tough time believing that he misspoke when he uttered nearly the exact same phrase 36 times (or probably more), he switched to claiming that the insurance lost was "substandard." This apparently means that it didn't cover contraception and maternity leave for 70 year old men. That contraception coverage is crucial--why else would the penalty for not covering contraception/sterilization/some abortions be steeper than not providing any healthcare at all ($100/employee/day = ~36,500/employee/year for the former and $2000/employee/year for the latter)?



But in the meantime, it is certainly entertaining to sit back and watch our haughty president and his arrogant supporters squirm a bit. And not just because they have been lying repeatedly to the American people for the last several years.

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Quick Link: Fr Z Tells It Like It Is--What is "Pastoral"

First of all, good for the bishops in general and Bishop Zubic in particular for continuing to stand against the tyrannical HHS mandate. I'm not necessarily expecting the good guys to win on this one, at least not in the short term. Perhaps it will be another nail in the coffin of civilization, another step closer to the abyss, another stumble into the outer darkness. I am expecting this to occur in my lifetime, so it's not merely an abstraction.

Second, Fr John Zuhlsdorf is spot on with this:
For liberals, being “pastoral” means compromising the Church’s teachings and lying to people. For liberals, being “pastoral” is like being “prophetic”. They proclaim themselves “prophetic” and then claim that their prophetic voice trumps what the “hierarchical” or “official” Church says and does....
Of course secularists and catholic liberals who run along with them don’t care that the Church will be driven out of providing health care for the poor.  They want more big government.
I've known a handful of liberals who honestly did care for the poor, and even a few who actually did more than caring in the abstract sense. Good for them. However, the tendency is often exactly as Fr Z calls it: clamoring for more government, even when big government is precisely the problem. And I have scarcely known a liberal catholic who can honestly claim to be really faithful as a Catholic. Doctrines matter. Morals matter. They aren't the whole of Catholicism; they aren't the only thing to Christianity. But neither are they irrelevant, and neither can they be discarded in favor of "social justice" or "being pastoral" or whatever euphemism they may concoct for the abandonment of the Faith.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Quick Link: Demeaning?

Ace notes that the new Obamacare ads are awfully demeaning, especially to Millennials (their obvious target group). I agree with him wholeheartedly. Men, this is what the President (and his adwriters) the President's supporters think of us:
"Don't tap into your beer money to cover those medical bills." This is another way of saying that we are too stupid to have bought medical insurance on our own, that big-brother government needs to step in to make sure we have insurance. Apparently our problem was that we had to choose between hedonism and health care, and we chose hedonism. There is certainly some truth to that in some cases, but as a whole generation, really?

Oh, and women, you're not off the hook either. Obamacare wants you to be as easy as your access to birth control:





Ace has this to say about these ads:

Do Millennials really see themselves this way? My God, I hope not.
You know, I bust on Millennials a lot. So that is Enemy Action.
But I think these ads are worse. When I insult Millennials, I mean to insult them. I'm trying to blame and shame them for their vapid grasp of policy (and reality).
Again, that's an Enemy Action. And the insult, while insulting, is less hurtful, precisely because one knows it comes from an enemy's mouth.
But here are people trying to appeal to Millennials. They present themselves as "friends." They "get" you, Man.
And here is what they think appeals to you -- pictures of young people in Party Hardy poses and daffy young stupid things who think Ryan Gosling is like sooo dreamy and my God where would I get birth control pills if Obama didn't draw me a map?
Really?
If this actually is appealing to Millennials -- and they find this to be non-demeaning -- then every insult I've shot their way is true.

Sadly, we millenials  are the ones who overwhemlingly voted for Obama, and who in large part were turned on to the Obama Campaign by the old Lena Dunham ad:


So apparently, these ads do speak to members of my generation, and are not taken as demeaning. That's unfortunate, and telling. Call it the slow realization of the great liberal death wish, if you will.

How Bad Is ObamaCare? The Ads

How bad are the Obamacare ads? They're so bad, apparently, that even Planned Parenthood is decrying them. Oh, they tell the truth alright, and it ain't pretty. Even Planned Parenthood dislikes them (mistaking them for anti-obamacare ads). Screenshot from Planned Parenthood Colorado:

Caption of their tweet: "Unfortunate that anti-obamacare folks are #slutshaming #women who use #birthcontrol #ThanksObamacare twitpic.com/dxrep"

So yeah, about that #Waronwomen....



Monday, November 11, 2013

The End of Man

Q. "Why did God make you?
A. "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next."

There was a time when we knew this from memory and had internalized it. It was a rote answer, yet for many people it nevertheless came form the heart.  Now it's been forgotten--or worse, pushed aside--with the result being that life has become fleeting yet endless.

Man was made to be happy, was made for love; and on the other hand, to seek truth, to know. Happiness is found in meaning, love is found in truth. In abandoning this simple wisdom, and in turning away from God, man loses not only truth and meaning, but also ultimately knowledge, happiness, love, and indeed his very identity, his very soul.

We cannot find any of these things ultimately in the world. We catch glimpses of them, in temporary, incomplete, and imperfect forms: so many reflections as in a glass. In turning away from God, we turn away from that which we are seeking, that which makes us happy, or wise, or really loving. We substitute purpose for meaning for end, and kindness for charity for love, with the result that even kindness seems bitter, and our purposes seem empty and contrived.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Obamacare: Put Up of Shut Up

Ace nails it.

Both parties should have no problem with this suggestion. Basically, take the delay (you know, the one that Republicans were asking for during the shutdown, but that Democrats are now asking for having "won" the shutdown showdown). Give the left until just before the next election to get it working.

If it works, it become a winner for the Democrats. If it fails, it's a winner for the Republicans (etc.). Get rid of the goddamned HHS Contraception mandate either way--there is, to be blunt, no good reason to retain that. For the rest of this misbegotten bill that the left likes so much, make it a put up or shut-up deal. If it can be made to work, fine. For better or for worse, the idiots who voted in the 2008 election (and again in 2012) elected Demoncrats, so be it. The people apparently wanted this, even if a bunch of innocents end up suffering over it. Repeal becomes the long game, and may change to "restrict". It becomes one more nail in the coffin of civilization.

On the other hand, if (as I and many others believe) Obamacare can't be fixed then the people who voted for it should immediately face an election which is a referendum on that vote. No more political theater/shutdown shenanigans (from either side). No more "It doesn't work because REPUBLICANS." You get a little less than one year to fix it. Since it took scarcely more than a week to craft it and vote on it, a whole year should be plenty of time to fix it. If not, the whole thing goes away without any further votes, and we start over (if necessary).

And the worthless goddamned tyrannical HHS mandate needs to die either way. There's no excuse for that bit of petty despotism on the Obama Administration's part. It is unjustifiable regardless.

That is all.

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Quick Link: Why It's Nice to Be Semi-Anonymous

Because he has the same views on gay marriage that Barrack Obama did until just a year or two ago, all the bien pensant have agreed that Card is a horrible bigoted monster who must be driven out of all decent society. So no review of the movie,  Ender's Game, is complete without a condemnation of the author himself.

From Ace of Spades blog. First they came for the Mormons...

I expect this kind of thing to escalate from simple boycotts (and 2 minutes hate) into being barred from "reputable" employment, fines (we already have those), possibly jail time, and then violence against persons and property (again, we have some of that) and ultimately to imprisonment, exile, and executions (via "euthanasia" knowing the folks pushing this homosexualist jihad).

Monday, November 4, 2013

Why Divorce hurts Children

It is a simple fact that divorce hurts children. It has been said (I think by Fulton Sheen) that when parents go through a divorce, they lay their crosses on the shoulders of their children. There are a lot of reasons why divorce hurts children: they become objectified, just another strategic objective in the battle between separating spouses; they have no stable home environment, especially if mom gets a new boyfriend every month and dad takes up drinking; there's no unified parental front for making and upholding rules, and any attempt by either spouse to do this might get undermined by the other spouse trying to be the "fun" parent.

It occur to me that there is another reason why divorce hurts children, and this psychologically. Children need to be loved, and this is a thing which goes beyond (though does encompass) simply being told that they are loved. What's true in fiction is true in life here: show, don't (just) tell. But love becomes an informed attribute in divorce, because the children have been told time and again by both parents that they are loved by those parents; but they know that at some point, the parents also said "I love you" to each other. They now witness that their parents don't really love each other, or don't anymore, and so "I love you" becomes an empty platitude between the spouses. Might it not also be an empty platitude between mother and daughter, between father and son?

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Obamacare Explained

It occurs to me that the AT&T "It's Not Complicated" commercials make an excellent critique of the Obamacare Website:



Really, also the whole boondoggle with the premium increases:




Then there's the question of why there are fewer options under Obamcare. Is it better to have more options (e.g. to not get your old plan terminated), or the single-payer option which Obamacare is heading towards:


Even some of the "retro" commercials work:


Somebody should make a parody version of these, seriously:

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Quick Link: Winners and Losers--But Mostly, Losers

Ross Douthat on the winners and losers of Obamacare:
"The wreck of HealthCare.gov matters most of all because of what it means for the underlying workability of the policy, but it also matters in the short term because it’s preventing a pro-Obamacare coalition from coalescing among the law’s beneficiaries: Without a working interface, the upside of the reform remains invisible to a lot of people even as the downside goes out in cancellation notices and rate increases.... 
But “rate shock” seems different, because premium increases in the individual market creates a set of Obamacare losers within a group of people who weren’t obviously winners to begin with. A couple like the Harrises of Fullerton, California, for instance, making $80,000 a year and buying on the individual market in a high cost-of-living state, were already disadvantaged relative to the millions Americans who get insurance through an employer and benefit from the employer tax break; now they’ll be paying an extra $1500 a year as well (albeit, yes, perhaps for more comprehensive coverage).... 
And to dig back into the position where I do strongly disagree with Cohn’s perspective, what makes this setup potentially more perverse is that it raises rates most sharply on precisely those Americans who up until now were doing roughly what we should want more health insurance purchasers to do: Economizing, comparison shopping, avoiding paying for coverage they don’t need, and buying a level of insurance that covers them in the event of a true disaster while giving them a reason not to overspend on everyday health expenses. 
If we want health inflation to stay low and health care costs to be less of an anchor on advancement, we should want more Americans making $50,000 or $60,000 or $70,000 to spend less upfront on health insurance, rather than using regulatory pressure to induce them to spend more. And seen in that light, the potential problem with Obamacare’s regulation-driven “rate shock” isn’t that it doesn’t let everyone keep their pre-existing plans. It’s that it cancels plans, and raises rates, for people who were doing their part to keep all of our costs low."

Obamacare turns a few of the previous winners into losers, which is unfortunate enough, but worse still it turns some of the previous losers into bigger losers. Thanks to the web debacle, there just aren't that many "winners" yet under Obamacare, and in fact more people have lost insurance than gained it. Actually, more people have lost their insurance in just three states than have successfully applied for it in all 50. Worse, this may actually be a part of Obama's own plans for Obamacare, and he certainly did know that it would be likely, and it is clear that he is lying about (and trying to cover up) the effects of Obamacare. We can only hope that people remember this next November.




Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Quick Links: How Far Is Far Enough

Apparently, some city officials in a cemetery in Colorado have refused to allow the name "Jesus" to be placed on a preacher's wife's gravestone:
Adams said her mother-in-law was passionate about her Christian faith and her family. Her final wish was to have her cemetery marker engraved with the ichthys, a symbol of early Christianity. She also wanted the word ‘Jesus’ written inside the fish. 
“At first they told us it wouldn’t fit,” Adams told me. “But after we kept pushing them the cemetery director told us that it might offend somebody. They weren’t going to allow it.” 
The family was devastated and asked the cemetery director to reconsider. He refused...city officials kept telling them that people would be offended by the name of Christ.

The name of Jesus has been banned... over this woman's dead body.

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Quick Link: What Am I Not Supposed to Judge

"Judge not, lest you be judged; condemn not, lest you be condemned." Yes, but what am I not supposed to judge, since elsewhere I read: "By their fruits you shall know them"? The answers might be: a person's "heart"/intentions; the state of his soul; his circumstances and struggles; or his knowledge of the sinfulness of his actions. On the other hand, the action itself must absolutely by "judged," as in evaluated: this is a good action, this is a bad action, this was a good deed, this was a vile sin. A man's "works" are his visible fruits, and we are instructed to pay at least some attention to these.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Quick Link: Why Government Spending Increases

Rod Dreher explains in a short post why the federal budget and the debt ceiling keep increasing. The answer is simple: the budget's discretionary spending can be divided into four parts, Social Security, Medicaid, Military, and Everything Else. Few people want to see cuts in the Big Three (personally, I'd like to see both SS and Medicaid (and other healthcare programs) get the axe, and am ambivalent about the military), and it seems like people over the age of 50 (read: likely voters) get especially irate whenever a suggestion is made to make any changes to either Medicaid of Social Security. A few people clamor for cuts to the military's budget, but even this doesn't seem  like a big enough bloc of people to effect change there. So, we're left with Everything Else, which is largely the part of the government which went on shut-down.

Truth in Advertising: Obamacare Hotline Edition

Apparently, the Obamacare help hotline is 1-800-318-2596, that's 1-800-F1UCKYO. And that's exactly what the helpline (and really, Obamacare) is designed to do.

That is all.

Shutdown Theater and the Politics of Inflicting the Maximum Misery

One of the miscellaneous uncompleted posts I wrote at some point. Might as well publish it now while the shutdown is still fresh in everyone's minds, even if we have more information now than we did at the time of initial writing.
 
President Obama--not the House, not even the Senate, but Obama and his administration--was apparently picking and choosing what gets closed and what stays open during the #Shutdown. So while we might blame the shutdown on the Republicans in the House (for starting it by refusing to compromise on Obamacare), or the Democrats in the Senate (for keeping it going by also refusing to compromise on much of anything), it's worth noting that Obama is the one who is deciding to make the shutdown as painful as possible. This at times is involving shutting down parks which are not even normally funded (or staffed) by the government, and perhaps doing the same to "government" services provided by third parties. And that is really the big difference between this shutdown, and the previous 17 which occurred under previous Administrations/Congresses since 1976.

I'm curious to see what, if any, impact this has on the popularity of the President, as well as both chambers of Congress [bad for both]. I ask this in the context of the president's approach--maximizing suffering for everyone during the shutdown--as a tactic for ending the shutdown.

My suspicion remains that everyone will simply continue to blame whichever party he favors less--that has been my observation so far, anyway. There are two ways to internalize this. The first is to argue that Obama wasn't picking and choosing, that his hands were tied. This was the official stance of the administration. The other is to argue that Obama was picking and choosing, and that it did in fact increase short-term suffering, but that he did so to force the Republicans' hand (which ultimately, predictably, happened). The line of reasoning is that this is a small short-term sacrifice in order to make a larger long-term gain: ostensibly, the reopening of the fraction of the government which was shut-down, but realistically a victory for bloated bureaucracy and government of gargantuan proportions.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Seven Quick Takes Friday (vol. 6)--Lots About Football


--1--
Since I've been talking about college football-related stuff anyway, here's my thoughts on the play-off for next year: it's not necessarily going to be an improvement. Sure, we move to 4 teams rather than 2, but there have been some years during which those four teams were (arguably) not the best 4 in the country. If we went based on BCS ranking, more often than not, the four picked are certainly not the best four: see, for example, 2008 when the BCS ranking would have given us Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama but left out USC (which finished 12-1 and ranked #3), Penn State (which finished 11-2, with one loss being the blowout loss to USC in the bowl game), and Utah (finished undefeated, included a sound beating of...Alabama in the bowl game), not to mention the Texas Teach team which at that point was also part of the 3-way tie in the Big 12. Another year which stands out is 2007, in which we would have had (presumably) Ohio State, LSU, Oklahoma, and Virginia Tech, but not the West Virginia team which drubbed OU, nor the Kansas team which beat Virginia Tech in its bowl game, nor the USC team which was left out of the championship (against LSU, which most of the country wanted to see anyway) thanks to a loss to Stanford, nor the Missouri team whose two losses both came to OU but which beat Kansas, nor the Georgia team which ended up ranked second.
Unbeaten? Check. Beat several ranked opponents? Check. No unbeaten teams from power conferences? Check. Played for or split the national championship that year? No check.

One might argue that this is a relatively anomalous pair of years, but I think these would be the rule rather than the exceptions. For example, does the committee take 11-1 Oregon or the 11-2 Stanford team which beat them, or both (leaving out 11-1 Kansas State, plus 10-2 LSU/A&M/Florida/Georgia, or the Lousville Team which beat that Florida team)? Or after the 2000 season, in which Washington, Oklahoma (the eventual champion), Miami, Florida State, and Oregon State, and arguably Virginia Tech all have a strong case for playing in the play-offs.


--2--
The counter-argument is that in even these cases I named, it's better to have 4 teams than 2, and besides, there are years like 2003 and 2004 (USC-Oklahoma-LSU/Auburn). Why go to 8 teams when most years there aren't 8 "worthy teams?" Indeed, there are the occasional years like this when 4 is better than 2--but can we really claim that 6-8 would not be better than 4? In 2004, for example, we'd have both Texas and Call in the playoffs with 6. In 2007 and 2008 we'd get all of the realistic contenders. As for having "unworthy teams" make it into the mix: I'd rather a quick out in round 1 in which #1 destroys #8 * than watch as #5 gets left out, given that more often than not, #5 has as strong a case as #4 or even #'s1-3 (that 2008 USC team probably would have mauled either Florida or Oklahoma, and the Utah team of that same year did maul Alabama).
A split national championship--just like every other year before the BCS.

The problem with the BCS is that it promised us the 2 tops teams would play, but then failed to convince many fans that the two teams playing really were the top 2 (sometimes, that either team was in the top 2). Yet, everybody mostly accepts the outcome that the winner of the BCS championship game is the national champion, case closed (the sole real exception is the AP/BCS split championship between USC and LSU). Adding two more teams give the illusion of closing the case, when in fact it will tend to make more teams feel more strongly about being "left out" in a given year. In essence, it leaves us in the same place as the BCS leaves us: picking a champion the same way as before (we've just changed whose vote counts in the polls), albeit with games between the "top" 4 teams rather than 2.


*As is the BCS championship game has been close year after year. More often than not, we get games like last year's and not games like USC-Texas.

--3--
Which brings up a third take on this subject: how would I have set up a play-off? If we're going to stick to 4 teams, I would have placed the explicit requirement that only conference champions are eligible. Yes, this leaves out a handful of "worthy" teams (Texas 2008, Oregon State 2000, Oklahoma 2003...), but it is at least somewhat objective. At least we don't ever get stuck with 4 teams from 2 conferences, or worse, 3 from the same conference. The committee then decides which 4 conferences likely produce the best team.

But 4 teams is not actually my favored schedule. My actual favorite version of a play-off, and one which has I think 0% chance of ever occurring, would be a variable teams play-off. The committee is allowed to pick between 4-8 teams, with 2-3 rounds as necessary. The pairing would be as usual (1 vs 8, 2 vs 7, 3 vs 6, etc), but any unpaired team gets a by (so, if 7 teams play, # 1 gets a bye, if 6 then so does #2... and if 4, then only need 2 rounds). In a three-round playoff, the first round is hosted by the higher seeded teams.  This means that no really deserving teams get left out (#9 has a much weaker case than #5 in any given year), but also maintains the best teams in any given year. Thus, if there are four clear favorites (e.g. 2011's LSU-Alabama-Stanford-Oklahoma State), then there is no need to add in teams 5-8. On the other hand, if we have a year in which seemingly every team loses once, there is room for 8. Of course, the drawback comes in years when there are 3 clear favorites--do we play 8 teams to give no unfair advantages, or 4 because that's the minimum, and then hope that the #4 seed loses early?

--4--
Since I didn't get these off on Friday and have therefore seen a few scores, and since we're on football anyway: how about those upsets? Auburn* over A&M will make a lot of folks round these parts feel sad, but now that A&M has two losses, fans of other leagues should start to root for them to win (especially against now 6-0 Mizzou). Also, that Oregon win over Tennessee is looking better and better as the Vols dispatched South Carolina and played Georgia close. Louisville is now officially out of the mix (barring a rash of upsets--I think they get passed by 1-loss teams from any major conference). And there are a few potential BCS-busters still standing: Fresno, N. Illinois, and Houston, though Fresno hasn't kicked off as of the time of my writing this. Those who are suffering SEC-fatigue should root first for your own team, and then for Oregon, or (for the Huskies and Beavers fans) for Florida Sate/Miami/Clemson. Sorry Baylor, but I don't think you have a very good shot of winning the whole thing--though stranger things have happened.

*Speaking of which, suddenly the PAC-12 looks even strong against the SEC: Washington State lost a close one at Auburn, but is sitting second from the bottom of the Pac-12 North. Auburn is now in second in the SEC West.


--5--
Technically, as an Oregon State fan, I should be rooting against the ducks, and as a Texas fan, I should also be rooting for Baylor to lose at least one game (to UT). Actually, the game I most want to see is Oregon vs Baylor. I think that the best chance for this to happen would be either Stanford's running the table or an upset in the PAc-12 championship game, and either a 1-loss Baylor team's winning the Big 12 or two teams from power conferences' (Ohio State, Clemson/FSU/Miami, Alabama/Missouri) going undefeated to play in the national championship with an undefeated Baylor team. Suffice to say that I find the former more likely than the latter. Unfortunately, the college football gods hate the fans, so much as we want either Oregon/Alabama or Oregon/Baylor, my more cynical self suspects that we will get neither (e.g. an Oregon-FSU national championship, or FSU/Alabama with Baylor suffering two upsets, etc).


--6--
Advice to my young assistant, who has a frustrating roommate: surviving a bad roommate makes you a better person. Someday, if you get married, you will have to learn to put up with all of the annoying habits of your spouse. Your children may add a few habits of their own, and they probably won't leave you alone to do your own thing, either. Moreover, you will be a happier person for it.

--7--

Meanwhile, in Russia:

-----

Seven Quick Takes Friday is hosted by Mrs Jennifer Fulwiler at her Conversion Diary blog.

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Yep

A picture worth a thousand words.


And before people go crying "Photoshop, photoshop": sometimes photoshop tells a truer story.


Quick Links: On The Obamacare Website

I have two quick links on the ill-conceived ACA's website roll-out. The first is mostly a PSA of sorts: John McAfee, founder of the anti-virus software company, says that this website is "a hacker's wet dream." So maybe it's a good thing that the site doesn't work, since this might help dissuade people from entering all of their personal information onto the web for every hacker and identity thief to peruse at their leisure. The second is from Forbes, which is asking whether perhaps the websites troubles are a feature and a deliberate one at that: the crashes are to distract people from the true costs of Obamacare:
A growing consensus of IT experts, outside and inside the government, have figured out a principal reason why the website for Obamacare’s federally-sponsored insurance exchange is crashing. Healthcare.gov forces you to create an account and enter detailed personal information before you can start shopping. This, in turn, creates a massive traffic bottleneck, as the government verifies your information and decides whether or not you’re eligible for subsidies. HHS bureaucrats knew this would make the website run more slowly. But they were more afraid that letting people see the underlying cost of Obamacare’s insurance plans would scare people away.... 
The federal government’s decision to force people to apply before shopping, Weaver and Radnofsky write, “proved crucial because, before users can begin shopping for coverage, they must cross a busy digital junction in which data are swapped among separate computer systems built or run by contractors including CGI Group Inc., the healthcare.gov developer, Quality Software Services Inc., a UnitedHealth Group Inc. unit; and credit-checker Experian PLC. If any part of the web of systems fails to work properly, it could lead to a traffic jam blocking most users from the marketplace.” 
Jay Angoff, a former federal official at the agency that oversees the exchange, told the Journal that he was surprised by the decision. “People should be able to get quotes” without entering all of that information upfront... 
Think about it. It’s quite possible that much of this disaster could have been avoided if the Obama administration had been willing to be open with the public about the degree to which Obamacare escalates the cost of health insurance. If they had, then a number of the problems with the exchange’s software architecture would never have arisen. But that would require admitting that the “Affordable Care Act” was not accurately named.
To be blunt, the premium hikes are their to distract people from the true costs of Obamacare.

Sex and Religion

The title could as easily be "Sex and Irreligion," but many atheists aren't merely irreligious but rather anti-religious, not without God but rather against God. In any case, the Daily Mail has an article claiming that atheists have "better sex" than religious believers who are "plagued with guilt."

Of course, the headline is misleading (aren't they always), since the first line of the article is that "Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found" (emphasis mine). I would think that this is a no-brainer: if you are feeling guilty while having intercourse, and then continue to feel guilty afterwards, that would tend to make the actual sex a bit less "good."


Drilling deeper into the article, we read that this comes from a study "Sex and Secularism." According to the Mail, the study found that
"But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.

Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.
Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88 . In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively."

This interesting, but needs some clarification: what, exactly, is meant by having sex?
Of people raised in very religious homes, 22.5 per cent said they were shamed or ridiculed for masturbating  compared with only 5.5 percent of people brought up in the least religious homes.

Some 79.9 per cent of people raised in very religious homes said they felt guilty about a specific sexual activity or desire while 26.3 per cent of those raised in secular homes did.

Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents.

However, there was some good news for religious groups. People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction.
So, apparently, the study is not just looking at sex, but rather is looking at sexual activities which various religions consider illicit or sinful. We don't know if any of this was sex within the bounds of marriage or not--a study which (if the last paragraph is indicative) is meant to promote secularism may deliberately blur the lines on issues like fornication or adultery; then again, they may not (the Mail doesn't seem to be interested in reporting this detail).
I have a few observations and comments concerning this article. First, I still stand by the question of whether it matters, in the long run, who has better sex. Back when US News and World Report had their own article stating that Catholics apparently have better sex, this was my reaction:
When a study like this is used to pitch conversion to Catholicism, it's somewhat akin to saying, "We can't know whether the Catholic Faith is true or not, we can't even know whether the Catholic Religion is good or not, but you should still join the Catholic Church because you'll likely have better sex. In other words, join the Church because it feels good!" "Because it feels good" is not sufficient grounds for making major moral decisions, and this is the very attitude against which Christianity in general (and Catholicism in particular) has to contend. This attitude is, in short, rather antithetical to a religion which claims to be followers of the Truth.... I will grant that no apologia alone can convert a person, and few can even get most people to stop and consider conversion, or even to consider simple fairness apart from conversion. But we live in an age where science is king (along with Sports and Sex), and where "Science" is invoked as a stick with which to beat the Church: namely, "The Church is against science and impedes scientific progress while supporting junk science." Therefore, when a study of dubious scientific quality is invoked as reason to convert to the Church, and when it is subsequently demolished by scientific-minded people from outside the Church, it reinforces in those peoples' minds their own chief (stated) objection to the Church.

My point, then, is that science can be an aide to (but not a cause of) evangelism, but only if done right. Studies like this might make a man stop to consider other claims of the Church--if the study is done well.
The shoe is on the other foot, and my reaction hasn't changed: this is a rather lampoon-able approach to prosylitization, whether employer by Christians or by atheists. It basically says, "believe this because it's fun, follow this because you'll feel good!" rather than "believe this because it is the truth, and follow this way of life because it is good."

My second observation is that the Daily Mail and quite probably the authors of the original study have ignored that there is quite a bit of diversity which falls under the heading of and self-identifies as "religion". Mormonism, form example, is not recognizably a Christian religion inasmuchas there claims about Who Jesus Is are not really the same as the claim of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, or traditional Protestantism. They're not even really comparable to the older schisms and heresies that survived to today and are recognizably Christian (e.g. the Copts). They do not have the concept of the Holy Trinity, which is itself so fundamental to Christianity that it is invoked during baptisms in all of these actually Christian Churches, denominations, and sects.

Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-Day Adventists are even more removed.

Now, I grant that these are theological differences rather than moral differences, but the morality comes from combining the theology with the religion's anthropology (at least in "orthodox" or "mere" Christianity). Thus, for example, in the Catholic teaching of the Theology of the Body, the marital act is a symbol of the Trinity, and hence the two become one flesh and are also open to the generation of a third [1]. There are Eastern Orthodox and Protestant variations of this same theme, but I have never heard of a Mormon or a Jehovah's Witness version of the theology of the body. Given that the Jehovah's Witnesses explicitly reject the Trinity and that they also have some Gnostic leanings, I would be more surprised than not to discover that they ever develop a theology of the body.

A corollary of this observation is that the people conducting this survey probably don't distinguish between those who are active practitioners of their religion and those who are not. This distinction is often ignored by secularists, which I've always found somewhat strange. It's as if they believe that merely identifying with some religion makes one instantly be affected by every one of that religion's tenets. How these tenets get a hold of a person by merely identifying with that religion is beyond me [2].

My final observation (for now) is that this study and the Daily Mail article does pose one legitimate challenge to people of faith. To whit: "Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents." I can't speak to the experience of every religious home, but I have observed that many religious homes actually conflate Christian (including Catholic) sexual morality with prudery--which is the exact same conflation that the Daily Mail is all-too-happy to make as well.

Sexual morality then becomes a matter or self-repression, a set of rules to follow on pain of sin--and nothing more. The religion may have derived these rules from a combination of theology and anthropology, but the actual approach of the religious to the rules is often morality divorced from anthropology: call it ethics, call it rules, but it has the effect of being a list of "do this, don't do that" without any acknowledgement of the human difficulty attached to the moral law [3].

Part of the rules is apparently never trying to understand the rules. It's the law, and that's that: which has the consequence of seeming like a set of rules handed down by a demanding (and possibly capricious) God rather than being a set of rules established for our own good by a loving God. Therefore, children growing up don't turn to their parents (let alone to their pastors) with questions about sex and sexuality; which means that the turn instead to their peers, to pornography, and to Planned Parenthood for advice. Almost all of this advice will be detrimental to sexual health, to morality, and to sound sexual relationships.

The challenge, therefore, faced by parents (and to a lesser extent, by pastors, who should be there to support the parents as needed) is this: how will you instill sound moral teachings (sexual or otherwise) such that they still are able to come to you with questions and concerns? Because this article gets one thing right which needs to actually be addressed: the approach of the vast majority of Christian households to sexual morality falls well short of what our children need. It is a problem if they are turning to these "alternative sources" for learning about sex and sexuality--the advice they will receive there will undermine whatever moral standards you set for them, whether based on the Bible, the Catechism, or even simple common sense.

Parents, it is your responsibility to help form your children in the faith, your responsibility to be their primary educators. This means instilling in them a sense of morality and of virtue. Concerning sexuality, your goals should be chastity and purity of heart, not merely abstinence and avoidance. Abstinence may be a part of chastity--before and even at times during marriage--but it is not the whole.



---Footnotes---
[1] I'm not being overly precise in my terminology here, because I am writing with time constraints.

[2] Perhaps the secularists believe in a sort of magic after all.

[3] Sometimes the pendulum swings too far the other way, and the entire emphasis is on the difficulty to the point where the moral law gets discarded. This is also wrong.

Monday, October 14, 2013

Go Figure

Go figure that the day after I write a post speculating as to whom Mack Brown's replacement might be, the Longhorns would thoroughly beat down Oklahoma. I'm saved by not ever actually predicting otherwise--in the asterisk note in take number 5, I wrote "[Mack Brown's firing/resignation/retirement] is very likely even if he doesn't get blown off the field tomorrow. I think he only keeps the job at 10-3 with a close loss tomorrow or 9-4 with a win tomorrow and no more blowout losses. Since he already has 2 losses, this means that if he loses tomorrow in close fashion, he cannot lose again (including bowl game) for the remainder of the season. On the other hand, if he wins tomorrow, he can lose two more games at some point (Baylor, Tech, upset, or bowl)."

I'm actually kind of wondering if even this is too generous, though. Certainly, if the Longhorns, currently 4-2, finish 10-3 with the only additional loss coming in the Fiesta Bowl, he's probably still safe. If he loses one more along the way but then wins the bowl game, the same is true, especially if nobody finishes unbeaten in conference play for the Big 12 (he will then have technically tied as conference champions, plus a bowl win over presumably an SEC team in the Cotton Bowl). And certainly if he wins out and finishes 11-2, he'll be safe to stay here.

However, I get the impression that another 9-4 finish will be grounds for his retirement (perhaps to take over DeLoss Dodd's job ad AD). There is a segment of the fan base at Texas which has never liked him, and which was loud even during the run of 10-3 and 11-2 seasons. For one, a number of fans who remember the Major Applewhite days (as quarterback, not as coach) still hold him to blame that Texas did not win the national title or at least the Big 12 tittle in 2001--because he alternated Applewhite (the fan favorite) with Chris Simms (the big-name recruit) and thus lost the Big 12 Championship game to Colorado. Some of these fans continued to express frustration with Brown even during the 2006 season (the year after the Longhorns won it all), and the 2008-2009 seasons (for which UT's combined record was 25-2, with one of the 2 being the national championship game in which they replaced their best and most important player with their worst player). Suffice it to say that the fans themselves may not be satisfied even with 11-2.

And for that reason, I suspect that Mack Brown may decide to retire/replace Dodds at the season's end even if the Longhorns finish 10-3 or 11-2 (still not a guaranteed thing).

And as an aside, it was amusing to watch as a number of the highly touted replacement for Mack Brown struggled this last weekend. Charlie Strong won, but not in the blowout expected on Thursday night. David Shaw and my darkhorse Pat FitzGerald (of Northwestern) both lost. And Art Briles' Baylor team won but ugly, after suffering problems from...run defense.