Yet another reason to drink up - Like you needed another!

Here goes:

1. The president of the Detroit Public Schools Board cannot compose a coherent sentence.

2. Public university students across the nation are protesting - going even so far as to shut down entire interstate freeways in California - because they aren’t being subsidized enough.

Putting the cap on this downer, take the time to read Victor Davis Hanson’s latest comments on our general state of education, politics, and culture. It is a scathing indictment of pious, upper-middle-class eco-yuppieism and the lazy, uneducated, entitlement-minded middle- and lower-middle-classes too. The common thread of both, though, as Prof. Hanson so accurately identifies, is that they each want something without being willing to do what it takes to get it.

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.

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.

“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.

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.

First, people are already speculating about whether Brown will run for President or be Sarah Palin’s VP in 2012. Good grief. The man hasn’t even been sworn in as a senator yet, let alone cast a vote or participated in debate. Why on earth would anyone get this far ahead of themselves?

Second, there’s a pretty dumb kerfuffle going on in certain quarters of the blogosphere about a one-liner in Brown’s victory speech about his daughters being “available.”

Thankfully, Ayla Brown, one of the available daughters, has given an interview where she shows that she has a better grasp that many commentators do:

“I had no idea he was going to do that. I saw the script and there was definitely no mention of that. It was totally off script,” Brown said in a phone interview squeezed in between classes at Boston College.

She admitted that she was slightly embarrassed. “But that’s what gives people a chance to see my real dad.”…

“That is incredible. It just surprises me that people can be so negative,” Ayla said. “I feel as though all fathers across the nation can relate to having daughters and having these conversations…That’s our dad. There’s nothing creepy about it at all.”

Really, this is nuts. I think these people need to lighten up.

Scott Brown is the Republican nominee for the senate seat from Massachusetts that is open as a result of Ted Kennedy’s death. The election is next Tuesday, and pits Brown, a state senator, against Martha Coakley, the sitting state attorney general. Now, MA is probably one of the bluest states in the union. However, the last few polls out on this race have shown it incredibly close, with one poll even showing Brown ahead by a point.

Making matters even more interesting, Brown has made the race an open referendum on ObamaCare, stating forthrightly that he would be the 41st vote to filibuster the existing bill. This has made him an internet phenom - he raised $1M yesterday, mostly in small donations of $5-10 and most coming from out of state.

Yesterday was the last debate, and by all accounts, Brown did very, very well. Quoth Ed Morrissey at Hot Air:

While most of the post-debate attention has focused on Scott Brown’s Reaganesque moment in declaring that the Senate seat doesn’t belong to the Kennedy family or the Democrats but to all Massachusetts voters, Coakley had a Gerald Ford-esque moment on the war in Afghanistan. She declared Afghanistan to be terrorist-free and wants the troops to come home now:

Wow. Sometimes in politics, there are moments that really show you that a tide has turned. I thought Obama’s election was one of those times. Interestingly, now it seems not so much. In fact, if MA elects a Republican to the senate, that will be more than the tide turning - it will be a political tsunami.

We hope you will join us in 2010. Please do NOT feel bound to come for the whole year. If there’s a particular work or works you want to interact with, please watch the bulletin for announcements. The list below is generally a book per month list for your reference.

The thing I hear most about why people don’t come is that the books seem too heavy, etc. Obviously, enjoying the written word is a common denominator among all our folks, but the group effort in reading, interpreting and discussing the ideas contained in what we read is where the fun is. That makes the heavy thoughts/writing styles, etc. not only bearable, but enjoyable. It also provides a sense of accountability and encouragement to read books we might not otherwise pick up.

At any rate, here is the list- join us next year as you can! True Spirituality Schaeffer, Francis

Beautiful and the Damned Fitzgerald, F Scott

Thomas Aquinas (sel. Writings) Aquinas, Thomas

Violent Bear it Away O’Connor, Flannery

Mind of the Maker Sayers, Dorothy

The Odyssey Homer

Richard III William Shakespeare

Augustine of Hippo Brown, Peter

Picture of Dorian Grey Wilde, Oscar

Girl Meets God Winner,Lauren

Demons Dostoevsky, Fyodor

I’ll post about what’s coming in 2010 shortly- you won’t want to miss it!

As a reminder, here are the books we read together:

Thunder at Twilight Morton, Frederic

Everything That Rises Must Converge O’Connor, Flannery

East of Eden Steinbeck,John

Mystical Presence Nevin,JW

Blood Meridian McCarthy, Cormac

One Hundred Years of Solitude Marquez, Gabriel Garcia

Better Way Horton,Michael

Tempest Shakespeare, Wm

John Calvin: Steward of God’s Covenant Calvin, John

Heart of the Matter Greene,Graham

Christianity and Liberalism Machen, J Gresham

Yes, you are seeing Jesus holding a double barrel shotgun, having just shot Santa Claus. You can read the full report, complete with video, here. The creator of this display, who claims it to be a work of art, intends it to be a commentary on how Christmas has been commercialized.

Now, before offering any comment on this, I’ll offer the contrast of the second item:

That gem was found on a local church’s signboard. (Increasingly, I think that the best thing that government could do for the church would be to ban these signboards, stopping Christians from saying things that make them look like morons.)

OK, so here we have two vastly different views of Jesus and Santa. On the one hand, Jesus is popping a cap in Santa and on the other, Jesus sort of becomes Santa, complete with the list of naughty and nice. Poor Santa just can’t win, can he?

Really, what this proves to me is how utterly the church writ large has failed to comprehend Jesus, despite having the Scriptures and thousands of years of learning about them. Of the two, I think that the signboard actually displays the worse misapprehension. The implication of Jesus having a list and checking it twice is that he’s going to find out who’s a good little boy - getting salvation in his stocking - and who’s been a bad boy - getting a lump of Satan’s coal in his. So to be saved, you’d better be good, for goodness sake!

This is works righteousness taken to its logical conclusion. How this squares with anything Jesus ever said to a pharisee, anything Paul ever wrote - indeed, with the entirety of Scripture is lost on me. What the Bible actually teaches is that we are all desperately wicked, despite any of man’s outer appearances of being good little boys and girls. Of course, for the modern American church, this is unpalatable in the extreme. So instead, it transforms Christ into jolly old St. Nick, allowing its members the illusion of working their way off the naughty list and onto the nice list. But really, Santa is much less threatening that the Christ of the scriptures, isn’t he?

All of which brings me to the dead Santa scene. This one actually caused me to have several different reactions, because, unlike the signboard, there is an element of truth to this guy’s point. No one can reasonably dispute that Christmas has been commercialized to obscene extremes. Also, it is true that Jesus is going to ultimately judge the world and will destroy such things.

That said, it seems that the guy who created this is missing several pretty important points. As a Christian, one should understand that the commercialization of Christmas springs from our completely self-centered, greedy, depraved natures as humans. Would taking out Santa stop that? I realize that Santa may be seen as a symbol for such, but I don’t think it’s obvious that this was the intent of the guy who set this up. He clearly rails against commercialization, but that’s the symptom, not the disease.

Also, I don’t think that the image of Jesus with a shotgun is exactly the way to convey either divine displeasure with commercialization or the way judgment will be carried out. The shotgun implies a very human vigilante-style justice, which is a far cry from the perfect judgment that will be carried out at the last day.

Taking both pieces together, though, it strikes me that the modern church must really be lacking for understanding of Jesus to try relating him to Santa Claus. Maybe the ones who need to get back to the true meaning of Christmas aren’t all the pagans around us, but church itself.

Imagine that: teaching depravity through satire!

Best line:

“We’ve tried behavior modification therapies, but children actually learn from our techniques and become even more adept at manipulating others while concealing their shameless misanthropy,” Singh said. “Sadly, experience has taught us there is little hope for rehabilitation.”

“Just look at the way most adults act,” Singh added.