Why Journalists Fail

Thursday, September 13th, 2012 Posted in Judo Chops | 2 Comments »

Let me run a theory about men and women by you. Your job is to tell me if you think the New York Times would print it: The reason that women economically outperform men—women in their 20s outearn their male counterparts, ...

Chicken hawks, meatheads, and real soldiers

Saturday, August 18th, 2012 Posted in Judo Chops | 3 Comments »

I suppose in the grand scheme of crapola that is major network television, a show where has-beens and desperately-wish-they-could-bes get to play at being army men isn't the worst possible fare. "Stars Earn Stripes" is an NBC show in which ...

Stream of conscience

Friday, July 6th, 2012 Posted in Judo Chops | 3 Comments »

Whenever I have a lot to do, and I finally muster the resolve to do it, I'll say "time to get down to it." This always reminds me of that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young song, which makes me think ...

The First Amendment, that pernicious threat to justice

Friday, November 5th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »

And in news related to the previous post, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development remains vigilant in pursuit of housing justice by harassing, in conjunction with one of those myriad number of non-profits that coalesce around and feed ...

My definitional justice manifesto

Friday, November 5th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 3 Comments »

San Francisco officials strike a blow for "food justice" by barring the Happy Meal. I think the word "justice" has now jumped the shark. We already have economic justice, social justice, global justice, environmental justice, climate justice, housing justice, transportation ...

On the virtue of getting over being offended

Friday, October 29th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »

The AP headline is certainly startling: "41% OF NON-CHRISTIAN AF CADETS CITE PROSELYTIZING" My goodness, the reader is invited to think. What's going on in Colorado Springs? Are little bands of dogmatists policing the halls like a pro-Jesus Taliban, seeking out bearers ...

On the conservative as warmonger

Wednesday, October 27th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 2 Comments »

The problem with political science professor Corey Robin's claim that warmongering is woven into the DNA of conservatives is that he can't seem to define his subject. One minute a conservative is a Burkean, the next he's a tea-partier, then ...

You do not have a right to inflict your stupidity on others

Saturday, October 23rd, 2010 Posted in Education, Judo Chops | No Comments »

An appeals court in Ohio tells a teacher she doesn't have a First Amendment right to give her students Heather Has Two Mommies in the face of parental and school-board opposition. Perhaps her punishment can be to actually familiarize herself ...

Put me in a box

Thursday, October 21st, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 14 Comments »

An organization of which I've been a big fan for years is the Institute for Justice, a team of Davids repeatedly taking on Goliaths who use the powers of government to keep small businesspeople from competing with them. IJ's defense ...

Data and dictionaries: the ideologue’s worst enemies

Saturday, October 9th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »

This is the sort of hyperbole that leads reasonable people not to take public education advocates seriously, from Education Week's Justin Baeder: "And there isn't a business in America that could find people willing to work so hard and overcome so ...

I’m not saying you’re an idiot, but…

Friday, October 8th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 2 Comments »

Here's a shocker: an "educational" rap song rooted in the utterly discredited Howard Zinn school of Marxist American history (to wit, that America's Founders were money-grubbing opportunists and thugs), designed for Oklahoma schoolchildren, turns out to be an absolute embarrassment ...

On the virtue of a good beating

Wednesday, October 6th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 2 Comments »

Jonah Goldberg, on how the despicable Fred Phelps and his entourage might have been dealt with in an earlier, more "hands-on" era: "If this country worked more properly, if you saw a whole bunch of battered, bruised and bloodied people in ...

Suffer in silence, please

Friday, September 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 2 Comments »

It just never gets old, the article by an academic detailing all the work that academics have to do. Rob Faunce offers the latest installment: We have to plan for our courses weeks in advance. We have papers to grade. ...

Refine this

Monday, August 9th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »

Terry Nichols, the terrorist whose twisted little mind told him to fight government oppression by blowing up babies and postal clerks, is suing officials at the federal prison where he resides, apparently not counting it so much a blessing that ...

Memo to the NCAA

Sunday, March 28th, 2010 Posted in Irritations, Judo Chops | 4 Comments »

Perhaps it's a new phenomenon, or perhaps I'm becoming more curmudgeonly, but it's gotten that I cannot abide watching the aftermath of NCAA basketball games. It's almost a certainty now that, in the event of a close game, at least ...

If you’re reading this, you’re going to hell

Friday, March 26th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 4 Comments »

At last, an answer to the rock-of-ages old dilemma: How will I evangelize to my heathen friends and neighbors after I'm taken up in the Rapture? These folks have a cost-effective solution. For a reasonable yearly fee, they will email -- ...

The law bites back

Friday, March 26th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »

A coda to the story of the dogs in California who mauled several small children.

The fine line between unrecognized genius and . . . stupid

Monday, March 15th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 7 Comments »

From Alternet, this excerpt from a student's email to his professor, contesting a mediocre grade in light of his self-evident brilliance: "I am an A student and that is an A paper, and always will be to me. . . But ...

More evidence that Tony is a bad Christian

Friday, March 12th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 1 Comment »

I understand the importance of civil society, and laws, and turning the other cheek, but there are some people I'd like to beat senseless with a tire iron.

Popular science notions

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »

Mark Noll, in John Wilson's Books & Culture email newsletter (which is provided free by Christianity Today and which you really ought to subscribe to, if not the premium online version) has this to say about a book that I really ...

The gift horse’s mouth

Friday, February 5th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 8 Comments »

So here's what irritates me about the Haitian government's decision to prosecute Baptist missionaries for child abduction and criminal conspiracy. First, this is, according to the news report, the first criminal case to receive a hearing in Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. ...

Animal control

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | 7 Comments »

My thing with these people who keep unstable or outright dangerous breeds of dog is that they're always shocked when their monsters break loose and, I don't know, maul three small children. A five year-old girl remains on life support, ...

Because names are not snowflakes

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 1 Comment »

The Texas Board of Education strikes a blow against communist tracts cleverly disguised as children's books. In other news, the author of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is discovered to be a former manager of the New ...

Short-sighted

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 7 Comments »

If this really is "...the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country," then I think we're all going to be just fine. And I have trouble seeing how a coded Christian verse on ...

Pat Robertson, pagan

Thursday, January 14th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 17 Comments »

Believing, as Pat Robertson does, that the suffering of those you despise is inflicted by a god on your side, and that the suffering of those you pity is the result of a devil's curse, seems to come awfully close ...

Criminalize this

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Policy and Politics, The Art of Parenting | 9 Comments »

Izzy Lyman takes apart Georgetown Law professor Robin West's attack on home-schoolers as ignorant trailer trash in delightful form. Perhaps most disturbing about West's hit piece is that it's published in a scholarly journal, even if it does come out ...

It all begins with an apple

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 Posted in Business Behaving Badly, Judo Chops, Policy and Politics | 4 Comments »

Ordinarily I'm not a fan of government meddling, but sometimes I am ready for a regulation requiring products made in whole or part in China to be labeled as such. Poisoned toothpaste, animal food, infant formula, building products that rot and ...

Ruh-roh

Thursday, January 7th, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops | No Comments »

"And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you meddling kids!"

Don’t do as I do, do as I say

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 Posted in Judo Chops, Theology | 1 Comment »

This news from the BBC, about a rise in the number of pagan winter solstice celebrants in the UK, is disturbing. How could people raised in the Christian West miss the point that Christmas is about shopping until your debt rivals ...

Memo to the Nabisco Food Goliath

Saturday, January 2nd, 2010 Posted in Business Behaving Badly, Judo Chops | 5 Comments »

Dear Nabisco MegaCorporation, Once upon a time there was a delicious little cracker called Harvest Grain. This cracker didn't ask for much, nothing, really, other than to be crispy and nutritious and delectable in Tony's mouth. Tony and his Harvest Grains ...