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Index for this page...(Be aware some links below may have expired.)
All The Following Items Were Posted On March 1, 2004 For those who appreciate the intricacies of the English language, the Washington Post publishes a yearly contest in which readers are asked to supply alternate meanings for various words. Here are some of this year's winners: 1. Coffee (n.), a person who is coughed upon. 2. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained. 3. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach. 4. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk. 5. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent. 6. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightie. 7. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp. 8. Gargoyle (n.), an olive-flavored mouthwash. 9. Flatulence (n.) the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are runover by a steamroller. 10. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline. 11. Testicle (n.), a humorous question on an exam. 12. Rectitud e (n.), the formal, dignified demeanor assumed by a proctologist immediately before he examines you. 13. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddish expressions. 14. Circumvent (n.), the opening in the front of boxer shorts. 15. Frisbeetarianism (n.), The belief that, when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck there. 16. Pokemon (n.), A Jamaican proctologist. (Thanks, as usual, to Max Weismann of The Center for the Study of The Great Ideas for bringing these goodies to our attention.)
National Insanity #1: High Achiever Is "Too Intellectual" to Teach High School Many Georgia public high schools have serious problems. The state has ranked 50th -- worst in the nation -- in SAT scores for two years in a row. Given that, you would think aspiring high school teacher Marquis Harris of Atlanta would be a dream-come-true for some lucky school. As he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
With such an outstanding record of achievement, opportunities would seem to be limitless for Harris. At first he had planned to attend law school. After some thought, however, he decided to pursue a career as a school teacher. "I came to realize that my true calling lay in inspiring, motivating, challenging and educating other young adults." So he applied to numerous public (government) schools in and around Atlanta -- without success. "Certification was not the issue. I am certified to teach in Kentucky and have applied for certification in Georgia." So what was the issue? Why didn't some Georgia high school grab this high-achieving, highly-motivated young black man? Could it be that he's... too successful, too smart? "[I]t appears that my achievements have proved to be a liability rather than an asset," Harris says. Case-in-point: after an interview at one school, he received the following email from the principal:
Harris says: "After reading the email several times over, I felt as if I had been slapped in the face. It is truly a sad day in the world of education when a 22-year-old aspiring educator is informed that he is too intellectual to teach high school." How comforting it must be to Atlanta-area parents to realize that, while many schools are failing to teach basic skills, at least some are working hard to spare young people from having "unrealistic expectations" (as the principal put it) as to what they might achieve in life. Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "Brains Can Hurt Job Applicants",
National Insanity #2: Cable TV Addict Drops Lawsuit Plans Alas, Tim Dumouchel won't sue after all, depriving us of a potentially hilarious and insightful legal spectacle. The 48-year-old Wisconsin man made national headlines a few weeks ago when he threatened to sue his cable TV company for fostering his "cable TV addiction." Dumouchel says he called to cancel his cable TV service four years ago, but the cable company never cancelled it, thus leaving him and his family helplessly under the control of the TV for the following four years. Dumouchel says he spent all his non-working time watching cable TV and was unable to resist doing so. The irresistible power of cable TV, Dumouchel further charges, turned him into a cigarette addict and alcoholic, made his wife put on fifty extra pounds, and transformed his kids -- ages 16, 22 and 30 -- into zomboid couch potatoes. Asked why he didn't just disconnect the cable himself, Dumouchel says he feared that was illegal. Asked why he didn't simply turn off his TV, he says his addiction made him powerless to do so. ''I believe the reason I smoke and drink every day and my wife is overweight is because we watched TV every day for the last four years,'' he stated in a written complaint to local police. Four years of free cable TV, he said, had deprived him of "freedom of choice." "Freedom of choice is my No. 1 issue, and they didn't give that to me," Dumouchel said. "It's all about them depriving you of choice." Dumouchel's cable was finally disconnected in December. But immediately afterwards, he bought a $40 antenna so he and his wife could watch the Green Bay Packers. We hope the Packers have a good lawyer. Sources: Fon Du Lac Reporter and Larry Elder (Thanks to James W. Harris of the Advocates for Self-Government and The Liberator Online for the above information. If you would like a free subscription to the Liberator Online, visit: http://www.self-gov.org/liberator/maintain.html.)
"To my thinking, and I'm sort of in the Ayn Rand school on this, privacy is one of the key elements of civilization. If we don't get a handle on government's power to invade privacy, we're not going to have any left." -- Former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, quoted in Details magazine, January/February 2004.
Some interesting & provocative articles on other websites Hating FOX, by Brent Bozell: The dominance of Fox News in the cable news ratings -- and what liberals see as its annoying tendency to cover topics and angles that they believe should be buried for the good of liberalism -- has led to a great amount of Fox-hating in the anything-but-"mainstream" press. Alleged child rapist nominated for Image Award, by Armstrong Williams: So, how does the NAACP choose to celebrate Black History Month? Among other things, they've nominated alleged rapist, child pornographer and drug addict R. Kelly for their annual image award. Buzz Lightyear for President!, by Joseph Sobran: In the 1940s, Friedrich Hayek intuited the great change, which he called "the road to serfdom." He was attacked for suggesting that the Nazi, Fascist, Socialist, Communist, and Democratic regimes were all in agreement on the basic premise that the State's power must keep expanding. Today, when a "conservative" Republican president assumes that same premise, who can doubt that Hayek was right? Starting a Brush Fire for Freedom - An interview with US Rep. Ron Paul, by John W. Whitehead: When asked what advice he would give to Americans concerned about the growing power of the federal government and the various threats to our liberties, Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex.) quoted Samuel Adams: "Every individual has a responsibility to be informed...." The Bush Doctrine, by Harry Browne: David Kay (George Bush's personal weapons inspector) has made it clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction and that the pre-war assertions of the danger from Iraq were wrong. Should George Bush apologize to the American people? No -- not according to David Kay. You see, it wasn't George Bush's fault. Science wins ancient bones battle: A US appeals court has given permission to scientists to study a 9,000-year-old skeleton - despite the objections of some Native American tribes. War against the Iraqi People, by Jacob G. Hornberger, January 2004: Immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President Bush and other U.S. officials announced that the attacks had been motivated by hatred for America's "freedom and values." Nothing could have been further from the truth, and U.S. officials knew it. Hair could tell drinking secrets: You may be able to claim you 'just had the one drink' on your way home from work with a straight face, but soon your hair could give you away. France's great paradox to pursue secularism with religious zeal, by Sophie Masson: Years of church-state conflict can help explain why the veil has been banned from schools. It's on. The lower house of the French Parliament has overwhelmingly voted to make into law the proposal to ban wearing "ostensible religious symbols" such as veils, yarmulkes and large crucifixes in public schools. The idea seems to be catching on elsewhere... WMD - A primer - Let's be clear on what is - and isn't - a weapon of mass destruction, by Eric Margolis: "Weapons of mass destruction." No term has been more abused, or less understood. George Bush has made it his personal mantra, and the slogan of his presidency. Before Teaching Ethics, Stop Kidding Yourself, by Gordon Marino: Socrates used to wonder whether virtue could be taught. But his concerns would have seemed priggish to most people today -- certainly to most academics. Of course virtue and ethics can be taught. Everyone is ready to lead ethics classes and workshops -- even undergraduates. The Origins of Nazism, by Ludwig von Mises: An excerpt from Omnipotent Government: The Rise of Total State and Total War, originally published in 1944 by Yale University as the first full-scale examination of German-style National Socialism as a species of socialism in general. Objectivism and the State - An Open Letter to Ayn Rand, by Roy A. Childs, Jr.: Dear Miss Rand, The purpose of this letter is to convert you to free market anarchism. As far as I can determine, no one has ever pointed out to you in detail the errors in your political philosophy. The Equality Dogma, by Thomas Sowell: Some readers objected to a statement in this column that black students usually do not perform as well in school as white students or Asian American students. These readers seemed to think that this was a personal opinion -- or even an immoral statement. It never seemed to occur to them that this was a verifiable fact, shown by innumerable studies over the years by many scholars of various races. What the Nazis Borrowed from Marx, by Ludwig von Mises: The Nazis did not invent polylogism. They only developed their own brand. Until the middle of the nineteenth century no one ventured to dispute the fact that the logical structure of mind is unchangeable and common to all human beings.
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