Santa's Interstellar Origins

Mr. & Mr. Claus

Church Stripped of Catholic Affiliation for Abortion

St. Joseph's hospital -- Phoenix's oldest -- has been stripped of its association with Catholic church by Bishop Olmstead. The reason? The hospital performed an abortion for a woman who was in her 11th week of pregnancy. She developed pulmonary hypertension and would have died without the procedure. The church allows "indirect abortion" in such cases, where a fetus dies because of a necessary secondary procedure, but does not allow a direct abortion, which is what happened in this case. The Sisters of Mercy who run the hospital stand by their decision.

I offer you a passage from the bible (Matthew 12:11) that seems relevant.

And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?

That's Jesus responding to the Pharisees who were trying to trap him & asked him whether it was lawful to heal on the Sabbath day. I think the same principle applies -- who would not perform an abortion when the outcome if you don't is the death of both the mother and the child?

PhDs Are Not Worth Much

With few exceptions, I advise undergraduate students away from PhDs. Sometimes I do that because they don't have a background that's strong enough to get into a doctoral program, let alone finish it. However, a lot of time I do it, because the value of, say a Clinical PhD over an MSW (Masters of Social Work) is rarely worth the work that goes into it.

This article is a little depressing, given what it says about my future job prospects, but at least I know I'm not lying to my students.

Indeed, the production of PhDs has far outstripped demand for university lecturers. In a recent book, Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus, an academic and a journalist, report that America produced more than 100,000 doctoral degrees between 2005 and 2009. In the same period there were just 16,000 new professorships.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T Authority!

These kids are going to be so embarrassed about this in 10 years. I think the current school-age generation should be called Generation Why the Hell Did My Parents Let Me Upload That to YouTube.

UhMeriKuhns R Dumm an Fat

This is really really REALLY depressing.

A sampling:

The report by The Education Trust found that 23 percent of recent high school graduates don't get the minimum score needed on the enlistment test to join any branch of the military. Questions are often basic, such as: "If 2 plus x equals 4, what is the value of x?"

The military exam results are also worrisome because the test is given to a limited pool of people: Pentagon data shows that 75 percent of those aged 17 to 24 don't even qualify to take the test because they are physically unfit, have a criminal record or didn't graduate high school.

What's Wrong with America

You Are Really Small

Bad Writing

The writing of the average male undergrad. Color me amused.

It begins...

The first thing—and this for obvious reasons—is that you must prefer “within” to “in.” “Within” is longer and takes up more space on the page; plus it’s a word that makes you sound smarter because it makes you sound smarter. So you begin thus: “Within the poem …”

Games as Art

Videogame designer Brenda Brathwaite has designed a few board games that are more about art and social statements than games. One of them is called Train. Two players play Train. They have boxcars, and they can use their turns to speed down the track, load the boxcar with yellow pawns, or slow its progress. The goal of the game is to reach the end of the track. At that point the player draws a Terminus card, which has the name of a place on it. Like Dachau. The players aren't told in advance that it's a game about the Holocaust. (But, come on. You're racing to shove little yellow men into trains. Might you suspect something?) Brathwaite says her goal was to put the player in the shoes of the train conductor -- make them feel a sense of complicity.

The game doesn't end when the game officially reveals itself as a Holocaust game. The players can choose to continue until all the pawns are moved. The players can also use the rules to slow the trains down and save the pawns. For the most part, players never move all the pawns over, and they use the rules to save the pawns. I find it pretty fascinating that most players feel either morally obligated or socially pressured to save tiny, wooden pawns.

I recommend the whole article.

So gay

This is the gayest thing ever.