Protesting the obvious....

...are a group of vocal parents in Fort Mill, South Carolina, who are apparently unaware that it is generally the young ladies who bare large portions of their torsos during school dances and at other functions.  Perhaps they've never gone to the mall, or church, or a school function, or elsewhere where teens are to be found?

No, folks, it's not sexism, but rather reality.  Young ladies know that putting themselves on display will get attention from young men; young men know that doing the same know that they will tend to get the disdain of both sexes. 

Maybe that will change over time, but I've got the crazy idea that we ought to design our policies around reality.

Brilliant example of appeal to authority fallacy...

......in this brilliant bit of cross examination by Senator Ted Cruz of Aaron Mair, the head of the Sierra Club, who repeatedly responds to questions of whether the Sierra Club would retract his testimony upon presentation of contrary evidence (like satellite temperature measurements of the last 18 years) by noting that he "agrees with 97% of scientists."

Sorry, Sierra Club, and sorry, Mr. Mair, but we have a phrase in my profession:  "In God we Trust; all others must provide data."  If you appeal to authority, you are ipso facto not appealing to science.  The weakness of climatology research is demonstrated in tactics like this.

Please, please, please don't do this

It appears that a growing number of marriage therapists are bent on introducing one of Deming's seven deadly diseases of management--number three to be specific--to the marriage relationship.  Yes, they are really advocating that couples have an annual performance review.

One would think that they were paid off by divorce lawyers to recommend this, as in work life, the performance review is at best a nonissue--the manager has communicated his views and feedback to the employee already, so it introduces no new information besides the size of the raise, if that.

At worst, the manager does introduce new information to the employee, and since the manager has waited an average of nine months to give this feedback, it is outdated and invariably negative.  Who waits to give positive feedback, after all?  Attaboys and Attagirls do not cause confrontations.  And in many cases, since the manager has waited a long time to give feedback, the information is false--there have been a couple of cases where I felt downright slanderous.

It also strikes me that, while I do hold to the Biblical doctrine of headship, even the most submissive wives are going to get a touch grouchy (to put it mildly) at being treated as an employee. 

So if you want to have a better marriage, don't do this, but rather simply make a practice of routine self-evaluation and asking your spouse how things are going.  Waiting months to give negative feedback is simply a great way of getting divorce papers served.

But on the bright side, the psychologists are choosing only one deadly disease, which is better than the city of New York can say.  They're encouraging promiscuous Gothamites to get IUDs, which of course exposes them to far more than seven deadly diseases.  #50 Shades of Stupid.

Great moments in gun control, law, and journalism

Apparently, the new gun control law in New York state, which does not allow any magazine that holds more than seven rounds, does not have an exemption for law enforcement.

Round yourselves up, boys, and get back out there without your guns!

Seriously, I can hardly think of a better example of how gun control advocates are motivated not by logic and evidence, but by emotions. 

In other news, a Minnesota lawyer has been "working" to demonstrate what a lot of us had suspected all along; that "lawyer" often is simply a highfalutin' name for "prostitute."  How so?

The moron billed his client, a woman seeking a divorce, for time he spent having sex with her.  Other suspicions you might have about the legal profession are verified by his previous probation for purchasing and using cocaine, and other suspicions you might have about my fair state being soft on crime are verified by the fact that despite a string of citations for "lack of decorum", a probation, and a full suspension, this guy has not been disbarred.

Finally, some thoughts on the saga of the Notre Dame player who used the death of his imaginary girlfriend as a "point of interest" in his attempt to win the Heisman Trophy; did no sports journalist out there have the basic curiosity to see if he could Google the girl's obituary--and possibly get a wonderful human interest story if the young lady had actually existed?

On the other hand, the thought of this young man indulging in what turned out to be homosexual Mormon love notes for months over Twitter is simultaneously creepy and hilarious.