Speaking of Chicago....

.....it appears that the gang members arrested after a horrible murder in Mississippi were members of gangs founded in Chicago.   Another account from Mississippi indicates that journalists were following leads assuming that those arrested were not Chicagoans, not Mississippians. 


I'd thought it was mostly just the Crips and Bloods practicing "evangelistic thuggery", and that mostly west of the Mississippi, but I guess I am wrong.  The question is whether the problem is the drug trade, or whether young men sent to the "safe south" by relatives in Chicago are bringing Chicago-style crime to their new home.

Picture of life in a one party town....

Courtesy Mr. Dilettante.   It's worth noting that Jane Byrne probably is the most responsible mayor they've had in the past half century, and she's famous mostly for living in Cabrini Green and preventing the Chicago Fire Department from murdering Dan Goodwin by washing him off the Hancock Center with fire hoses.


Why nobody ever got prosecuted for that one is beyond me--it's certainly attempted murder, and it illustrates how pervasive corruption is in the Windy City.  And prophetically, Goodwin, a.k.a. "Spider-man", was campaigning for improved firefighting techniques for skyscrapers.  Remembering 2001, he seems to have been rather prophetic.

Way too nice to Senator Markey

....was Dr. Judith Curry.  Now, watching the video, I will grant that she made a lot of good scientific points in responding to Sen. Markey, but given that Markey's position was more or less the basic logical error of "appeal to authority" or "appeal to popularity", I think she was far too gentle on him.  Here's how I would have responded:


Senator Markey, your question is a variant of the genetic fallacy called "appeal to authority", and as such it not only does not rise to the level of a compelling scientific argument, it also doesn't pass the basic logical tests that I was taught in elementary school as a way to recognize propaganda.  Now as a lawyer and Senator, you should be ashamed of yourself for using such an illogical line of thinking.


Speaking as someone who has learned a bit of the history of science myself, I would like to remind you that in 1884, Albert Michelson opened the Ryerson Physics laboratory by claiming that future discoveries in physics would be made in the sixth decimal place.  A couple of decades later, another Albert named "Einstein" shattered that idea.  Around the same time, the hypothesis of the luminiferous aether as a medium for light propagation was the consensus position, and before that, the consensus position was that fire had something to do with a substance called caloric. 


Obviously, scientific consensus has never defined truth and never will.  Now if you would like me to address the data and evidence, I shall be glad to do so, but I will require that you stop these illogical fantasies of a 97% consensus establishing truth.

In honor?

...of President Obama having told Parisians that mass killings don't happen outside the United States, his claim that the recent atrocity in California might have been just workplace violence, and in honor of his opening of all combat roles to women before a single woman passed the Marine Combat Infantry Course, I figured that the detachment from reality of the President could be well described by this Jimi Hendrix classic. 




Either he's lost touch with reality, or maybe he needs to get himself to Sister Generose's building for something akin to narcissistic personality disorder, or maybe we were right back in 2008 when we warned that maybe, just maybe, we ought to take his associations with Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and a host of other radicals seriously. 


What color is the sun on your planet, Mr. President?  You're cordially invited back to reality.

Our war on ISIS?

According to Dick Morris, it appears that the reason that we haven't been bombing ISIS oil tankers is because the President wants to avoid environmental damage--as if a regional war doesn't amount to exactly that. 


Actually, it's worse than that.  Since the tankers are being driven into Turkey, Iraq, and Jordan for the oil to be refined, what we have is the Obama administration utterly failing to persuade the Turks and Iraqis to close the border to uncertified oil.  Here's a map of the approximate areas controlled by each group,   It wouldn't take that much effort to interrupt the flow of money to ISIS.


For reference, one would assume that preventing ISIS from getting its oil to market by closing borders would reduce the environmental impact even more.  This is a failure on the part of the President that makes his comments about mass shootings in Paris look positively intelligent in comparison. 


And given that we've only how given the OK to kill ISIS leaders, it's getting harder and harder to argue against the idea that we've actually been supporting them.  Certainly we've not been waging any serious war against them.

Why funding for Planned Parenthood matters

Lost in the debate over whether government funds ought to be given to Planned Parenthood is exactly what it achieves.  Proponents would argue that the large amount of prescriptions written for contraception, pap smears performed, and referrals for mammograms indicate that Planned Parenthood is not, indeed, all about abortion.


Let's look at the statistics, however.  Planned Parenthood's Guttmacher Institute estimates approximately 1800 abortionists in 2008, 38% fewer than in 1995.  The same source notes that a 1st trimester abortion cost about $470 in 2009, and it's well known that not too many abortionists do second and third trimester infanticides.


So what we have, more or less, is revenue of about half a billion dollars (maybe twice that including 2nd and third trimester abortions) spread among close to 2000 abortionists; somewhere between $200k to $500k per abortionist.  After you subtract the costs for buildings, staff, and the like, that's  not much left for the average gynecologist's $250k salary.  Averaged for medicine in general, your doctor takes 10% or less of your medical bills--so the cash flow for abortion is in a really bad place. 


We would infer that the median abortionist would need a second job in order to make ends meet; after taxes, school debt, and the like, they often will not have the option to take a lower wage to be "charitable".   That runs into a problem; an awful lot of people, even those who aren't particularly pro-life, don't want to patronize doctors or even clinics or hospitals that provide abortions.   So doctors who perform abortions find their career options limited, especially outside of large metropolitan areas.


That problem is solved as Planned Parenthood gets subsidies to provide care to the poor, who do not have a choice in where they get care.  If we assume the three hundred thousand abortions committed annually by Planned Parenthood are paid at the ordinary rate, that's somewhere around a quarter billion dollars for 500 doctors--again, that doesn't pay the bills.  Have them do a lot of contraception, pap smears, and the like and add in another half billion dollars (plus state subsidies and the like), and the business proposition makes a lot more sense.


In other words, government subsidies are about the only thing that keeps abortion available outside of large metropolitan areas. 

The apparent state of climatology

Prominent among those attending this week's climate change summit is John Koskinen, head of the Internal Revenue Service.  Mr. Koskinen has even doubled down on his devotion to saving the planet by accumulating $5400 in limousine fees.


My friend Mr. Dilettante notes that he'll start believing in the majority theory when they start doing their meetings via Skype, and I tend to agree.  But that said, it seems that we have an even more basic criterion; we can start taking the global warming hypothesis seriously when attendees are actually drawn from the pool of people able to significantly contribute to the discussion.  My hunch is that Mr. Koskinen has even less expertise in climatology than he does on the ethics of tax collection--which is of course saying something.


Unless, of course, the point is his feedback on how to implement a carbon tax, that presumably without the consent of Congress.  Which is, really, probably the point; control of the energy supply.

A Better Bridge than Duluth: part 4

I’ve been going through the Duluth Power and Control Model for a few posts, and given that the hypothesis of patriarchy being the major or primary cause is not remotely defensible, we really ought to develop a tenable hypothesis. 

Let’s try Romans 3:23; we are all sinners, and hence we will do cruel things (insults, physical violence, sexual violence, etc..) when we have some justification (authority in church, politics, or elsewhere, mental illness, lack of conscience) and we think we can get away with it.  We know from Scripture—Moses and the foreman, David with Bathsheba and Uriah, Peter regarding the Gentiles, etc..)—that believers also can fall into this trap when our consciences do not prevent us.

In recognizing this, we instantly reject a few claims of Christian proponents of the Duluth Model: that the accused is not a Christian, that he is not entitled to the Matthew 18 process, and that repentance is difficult to impossible.  The Bible’s treatment of Moses, David, Peter, Paul and others refutes this.

(side note; I hope that people who assume the accusation is proof of guilt never get into a jury box!)

Rather, we must assume that repentance is probable for the believer confronted per Matthew 18—and even the unbeliever.  The purpose of church discipline is not bludgeoning, but rather restoration—see 2 Corinthians 2’s treatment of the man caught with his father’s wife. 

So if we have a case that I’ve seen—say the physically abused wife, or the wife of a man ensnared by pornography, alcohol and drugs who appears to have at least dated other women—why would we refuse to apply principles like 1 Peter 3:7 and Colossians 3:19 to that case?  At best, we win a man to Christ or restore him to fellowship—at worst, we are where we started, needing to make tough decisions about how to keep the rest of the family safe.    Either way, the woman can be freed from the abuse, and most likely the marriage.

For those not in the church, freedom from the Duluth Model means that we can finally differentiate between abuse cases rooted in patriarchal beliefs (of which I’ve seen at least one, to be fair) from those with other causes, and finally start dealing with what’s really going on in probably the majority of abuse cases.  We cannot implement Matthew 18:15-19 as a rule for secular cases, but we can implement our description of abuse in terms of opportunity, justification, expression to better fit the real data.

Now this is cool

One thing I noted when my great aunt was dealing with dementia (we believe Alzheimer's but we're not sure) was that she would pick at the "nutritious" food, but would make multiple trips to the dessert table.  Given that one of the consequences of dementia can be drastic weight loss due to forgetting to eat, it struck me that it might be possible that more flavorful food might be a God-send to dementia patients.  My mom's cousin, who cared for my great aunt, thought there was something to it.

Fast forward to today, and it turns out that some native American nursing homes are starting to serve traditional foods to the acclaim of the residents.  Hopefully this trend spreads not only among native americans, but also for the rest of us.  Perhaps one of the keys to taking care of the old lies not in the medical suite, but in the kitchen--I would dare suggest specifically in the spice cabinet.

And I've got to admit that I'd like to try musk ox stew sometime. 

Yes, black lives matter....

.....and that's why you want to support the police, as five people protesting a recent police shooting recently learned in Minneapolis.

Liberal logic

Among the politically correct, apparently it's wrong for a racist like Woodrow Wilson to be honored, but it's A-OK to honor a murderer of hundreds and architect of the Cuban police state, Che Guevara.

I guess it shouldn't surprise me, as I knew already that they were pretty uniformly in favor of Planned Parenthood, but yeesh....

Horst Wessel, call your office....

.....a school district in Huntington Beach, California, has insisted that children learn and sing a "Muslim Fight Song".  Not only is that a nasty breach of the students' 1st Amendment freedoms not to be compelled to a given religion, and not only is this pretty close to forcing kids to recite the first pillar of Islam, Shahada, but it's pretty pathetically bad, almost as bad as the Horst Wessel Lied.

Why is it that my family homeschools again?

The Duluth Model, Part 3: Divorce Statistics

Let’s examine the power wheel of the Duluth Model in light of the known fact that about two thirds of divorces are initiated by women, and women retain custody of the children in the vast majority of those divorces—as well as in the divorces initiated by husbands.

Does the wife who threatens divorce make a threat—to leave, specifically?  Does the wife who threatens divorce take money that is earned by the husband?  If indeed working women earn only 77 cents for each dollar earned by men, as feminists note, that is exactly the case in any 50/50 split of assets.  Add into that “child support”, and we are talking some serious money.  Would we assume that a certain portion of prospective divorcees hide or dispose of assets to keep them from a spouse?  You bet—I can name names.

Does the divorce-minded or control-minded woman seek to make all the big decisions, or act as the master of the castle?  Does she start to define roles?  Of course.  Will she use access to the children to manipulate her man?  Unless she files for joint custody, this must be the assumption.

Must we not assume that those who file divorce are likely to blame the other instead of themselves?  Again, I can name names.  Would we guess that some spouses of both sexes seek to isolate their spouses from friends with the threat of ending the relationship?  Is it not likely that a great portion of divorce filers belittle their spouses?  I certainly can name names.  Do they use intimidation tactics—say a restraining order or threat of legal action—to get what they want?  Absolutely—it’s proverbial among family lawyers, really.  And what are divorce papers, if not a form of legal intimidation?

The observant reader is going to notice that I have taken a quick walk around the Duluth Power and Control Wheel, and in doing so it would appear that the vast majority of women who file for divorce-about a third of women or so—would qualify under the Duluth Model as abusers.  Add to that women who have used family court for non-marital relationships (e.g. child support and all), as well as men, and we quickly arrive at the conclusion that the majority of adults are abusive.

So is this an anomaly, or is it what is common to man?   Given that a huge portion of women qualify as abusers under the Duluth Model, we can safely discard the patriarchy hypothesis, exactly as we should have when we found that 30-40% of domestic violence arrests were of women.  Yes, the conviction rates are lower, but maybe that has more to do with reluctance to convict women and the marks left, or not left, in altercations.

 

Maybe it's time to figure out a better model that actually works with the data we have.  To use pictures from my profession, we've only gotten to the "measure" portion of the Six Sigma DMAIC model, or the "I" of the IDOV model, or the second step of any 8D method, before finding that the operating hypothesis was hopelessly flawed.

It boggles the mind

According to Fox News, fuel trucks and convoys of ISIS were previously "off limits" to U.S. attacks.  Lessee....we have an enemy that uses mechanization to go across large expanses of land to attack innocents, and we had to let over a hundred people die in Paris before we could even go after their fuel trucks and oil refineries? 

Seriously?  When a huge part of winning the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two was due to effective blockades of the enemy, we couldn't even go after the supplies of ISIS?  

In honor of college hissy fits

Well, that's what I'll call them because, after all, this IS a family friendly blog.  Mr. D. comments on the horrific, unspeakable evil of white people dressing up as if they were Hispanic for Halloween.  Or as a "sexy Hester Prynne" on the left, I guess.  Obviously, don't read my blog or Mark's aloud to your kids, because they'll be wearing their bedsheets and burning crosses in the front lawn if you do.  Fer sure. 

Or, quite possibly, just like kids who grew up listening to Weird Al's parodies of Michael Jackson, they might just grow up to be normal, well adjusted adults who actually have a sense of proportion. 

But for those of you throwing the hissy fits and demanding the ouster of your professors and university presidents for no particular reason, here you go.

 

 

And for extra credit, rent "Blazing Saddles", of course.  And you guys throwing the hissy fits need all the extra credit you can get.