Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Culture Wars

Research NOW Reveals?

by Clay Staggs

Bill Cosby has defined an intellectual as someone who studies something that happens naturally. The folks who did this study, then, are definitely intellectuals:

Watching a curvaceous woman can feel like a reward in the brain of men, much as drinking alcohol or taking drugs might, research now reveals.

These new findings might help explain the preoccupation men can have toward pornography, scientists added.

I don’t think I need to add anything. Res ipsa loquitur.

Politics

This is a revelation?

by Clay Staggs

Here’s the intro paragraph from a Politico story on the upcoming testimony of Toyota executives before Congress this week:

Internal Toyota documents derided the Obama administration and Democratic Congress as “activist” and “not industry friendly,” a revelation that comes days before the giant automaker’s top executives testify on Capitol Hill amid a giant recall.

Is this big news? That the administration and Congress are not friendly to Toyota? They own two of Toyota’s competitors, for heaven’s sake. This observation would hardly be scandalous even if they didn’t.

Surely there’s some real news somewhere to be reported.

Culture Wars

UAH and the Ivy League Mentality

by Clay Staggs

Interesting kerfuffle in the commentary over Amy Bishop, the professor turned shooter in Huntsville:

“You have to talk about Amy Bishop’s mental health in this situation as one of the variables, but being denied tenure when you’re in your mid-40s at an out-of-the-way obscure rural campus in the deep South is a catastrophic loss, and people don’t understand that,” says Jack Levin, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

This is from a WSJ piece entitled “Going Postdoctoral” - a clever twist on “going postal.”

The wonderful thing about the internet, though, is that people can call out snobbery so easily. After having read an Instapundit link about this, one of Professor Reynolds’s readers emailed in the following statistics comparing Huntsville to Boston:

Boston: High school or higher: 78.9%
Huntsville: High school or higher: 85.7%

Boston: Bachelor’s degree or higher: 35.6%
Huntsville: Bachelor’s degree or higher: 36.1%

Boston: Graduate or professional degree: 15.3%
Huntsville: Graduate or professional degree: 12.7%

So Huntsville AL beats Boston in 2 out of 3 categories and isn’t far behind Boston in the third, especially when you consider all the college teachers, lawyers and doctors in Boston.

It has long astounded me how people outside the South assume that life in the South must just suck because it’s the South.

Miscellaneous

A Change in Blogging Habits

by Clay Staggs

Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve put anything on the blog. It’s not that I haven’t had anything that I wanted to post, it’s just that time has been a severe limitation.

But I don’t think it need necessarily be so. My habit has been to put up rather lengthy posts, with extensive commentary or criticism. I think that needs to change, in the interests of keeping things more updated.

So, to these ends, I’m going to start posting some links that interest me, and hopefully will interest our readers too. My comments may be minimal or non-existent. But as time allows, I’ll still post more detailed comments on other posts.

So here goes for today. Here’s a link to a story on the boy gap in education. This is a subject close to my heart, and I think this author is spot-on. Money Quote:

Problems start in preschool, where boys are far more likely to be kicked out for boyish behavior, writes Rao. “Boys are more likely to have trouble focusing and staying on task; boys have higher energy and tend to need to fidget to work off steam, which teachers and classmates can find distracting.” Most boys will grow out of hyperactivity, if given time, he argues. What they often get is a label and a prescription for Ritalin.

This needs much, much more attention than it’s getting, because the politically correct thing is to fret the progress of girls in our sexist society.