Monthly Archives: February 2012

Differentiation: A Job Growth Policy

 

When filling a position in an organization, the hiring manager is looking to find the best candidate for the job.  She is not looking for the most deserving candidate for the job.  Neither is she looking to even some perceived ratio of some undeserved population.  That is, maybe there are fewer long haired hippies in the corporate American culture than in the general American culture; it’s not the job of the manager to correct that woe.

Rather, she is looking for the candidate best suited for the job.  And to that end, she can, and should use, any tool or “discriminator” she has at her disposal.

Continue reading

North Carolina School Lunches: Child Car Commission

So, North Carolina has taken center stage in recent weeks.  A Hoke County school teacher noticed that a child’s bag-lunch didn’t meet proscribed nutritional guidelines.  In one case, the bag-lunch contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, apples and apple juice.  Missing was the vegetable.  The lunch was either replaced or supplemented with a school provided hot lunch.  Further adding to the outcry was the fact that the child didn’t eat the veggies provided; she only ate the chicken nuggets.

I think this is the classic case of what folks mean when they say that government is too big.

Continue reading

America: Obama Too Liberal

We have a long way to go, but right now, Barack Obama is fighting a trend:

After 3 years of President Obama America thinks the man is too Liberal.

Four years ago,” the poll said, “when Gallup first asked this question about Obama while he was competing for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination…37% said his views were too liberal, compared with today’s 51%.

That’s a move of 14% points.  In raw % moved, that’s 37%.

And the REAL interesting point is that more Americans [51%] feel Obama is too liberal than feel Santorum [38%] or ROmney [33] is too conservative.  Obama is more liberal than Santorum is conservative.

And Rick Santorum is C-R-A-Z-Y wrong in a whole bunch of areas.

And the number that must make us all scratch our heads?

Santorum scores the highest on “about right” between the three of them.

Bill O’Reilly: Wrong On Gas Prices

 

Bill O’Reilly has launched a pretty big offensive regarding the price of gasoline.  He’s been on air several times extolling the administration to get ahead of the situation and take a leadership role.  Personally, I’m not sure that Obama has  had much influence on the price of gasoline today.  Prices are high today not because of supply and demand, policies where Obama is clearly wrong, but because of the tension in the Middle East.  Specifically with Iran.

Given the nature of the world market there is no wonder that gasoline prices are going up.  And fast.

But O’Reilly loses me on his solutions.

Continue reading

Why We Hate Guns More Than We Love Kids

I don’t really like guns.  Never really have.

I grew up with a BB gun; could hit the eye of a bird flyin’ too.  But I never went beyond that.  I never had a shotgun or eve a .22.  I was happy shootin’ my tin cans.

So, I get that people don’t like guns.  I get that if a person doesn’t have a gun, it’s harder to hurt someone.  I get all that.

But, it’s a right that has been established; we GET to own a gun if we want to.  And the reason we get that right is that it’s important that the government isn’t the only people with the guns.

But still; I don’t like guns.  But I love kids more.

Continue reading

Cars Are Not Airplanes And Other Things That Are True

So, I have to tell you how hard it was to resist the temptation to go down the obvious post title on this one.

It was really really hard.

There, now ya know.

But really, cars and airplanes are not strictly the same thing.  And, for that matter, neither is the making of cars and the flying of airplanes the same thing either.  However, companies that make cars and companies that fly airplanes ARE kinda the same.  Same in enough ways that they make for useful comparisons.

Continue reading

War On Christianity: No Christian Present

So the claim is that there’s a “war on religion” going on.  And when you hear that you can safely substitute “religion” for “Christianity.”  I’m not sure that war is the right word, but there is clearly an over-reach by the left when it comes to the separation of the church and the state.

We know what they meant when they crafted the nation.  They meant that the “officers” of the church were not to be the “officers” of the state.  The two couldn’t be the same.  They most certainly, and clearly, did NOT mean that there was to be no religion in the state.

Continue reading

Are You Smarter Than A Three Year Old: Inequality and fairness

It’s no secret Obama is going to bang the “It’s not fair” drum this election.  Hell, he’s been bangin’ it since LAST election.  He’s continually calling for the rich to “pay their fair share.”  He can’t rub two speeches together without mentioning that everyone should play by the same rules.  Even more, he continues to claim that the richest among us have been doing exceptionally well in the economy while the rest of us are seeing wages stagnate for the last 30 years.

Don’t forget that it isn’t true:

 The claim that the standard of living of middle Americans has stagnated over the past generation is common. An accompanying assertion is that virtually all income growth over the past three decades bypassed middle America and accrued almost entirely to the rich.

The findings reported here—and summarized in Chart 8—refute those claims.  Careful analysis shows that the incomes of most types of middle American households have increased substantially over the past three decades.

So if it isn’t true, why does Obama continue to bang this drum?

Because he thinks that we think it’s true.

Continue reading

THe World Is Right Again

There’s no chance I could speak with any depth of knowledge concerning the physics of light-speed travel.  Nor can I tell you the impact of discovering that we just measured speeds in excess of light-speed.  I just know that it was a really REALLY big deal when we did.

And now it might have been a bad cable:

A malfunctioning cable may have been responsible for the claim that some particles may be able to travel faster than light speed, a potentially embarrassing outcome for physicists who had publicized the findings with great fanfare just a few month ago.

In September, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, said that ghostlike particles called neutrinos zapped from a lab in Geneva to one in Italy had seemingly made the trip in about 60 nanoseconds less than light speed—a finding that garnered headlines around the world. It also induced much head-shaking among skeptical scientists who said they were convinced that the result was an error.

It turns out the only ghost may have been in the machine after all. CERN says it had identified two possible effects that could have affected the experiment: one relates to an oscillator used to provide time stamps for estimating particle speeds, and a possible glitch in a fiber-optic cable.

Again, I can’t say how this would have thrown the scientific community on its head, only that it would have.

Namaste