I am SO glad to be retired from where honest opinion gets you fired

Much of my career was spent in higher education, among people who couldn't imagine voting any way but for the crooked local Democrats whose bad behavior they loudly protested, and who didn't know what to think about any issue until they received their daily talking points on political correctness. Working often felt like walking across a minefield in which being moderate and open to alternative solutions to current issues was considered the same as being an evil idiot.

One of the great joys of retiring was finally being able to HAVE an opinion, in public, no longer sneaking off to the first TEA Party in Chicago during lunch hour, but proudly inviting others to join me this year, and happily chatting with the black grandma who felt just as strongly about attending this year as I did.

Sadly, back on the plantation, the rot continues, as the Chronicles of Higher Education this week fired a blogger and groveled in self-abnegation for having ever allowed an obvious truth to be openly admitted. Fortunately, this time the person being thrown under the bus has enough muscle to still be heard, and has another column in today's WSJ that will certainly be read by more people than anything in the Chronicle.

Oh well, sunshine is still the best disinfectant. Be sure to read the whole thing, especially if you are considering either majoring in such a department or hiring a graduate.

Then and Now

Great comment from Instapundit today: "if you voted for Obama in 2008 to show you weren’t racist, vote against him in 2012 to show you’re not stupid."

I Get So Confused

Is breastfeeding a sacred right or controversial this week? A Drudge headline today says this unreleased Korean Oreo ad is controversial, but if so, is it because the baby is nursing, or because it is looking at an Oreo cookie while doing so? There's also an NSFW version, but I'm pretty sure La Leche League would only be offended by the product placement in either version, if at all.

As a photographer, I'm pretty impressed by the overall composition. How on Earth do you even get a baby to do that (hold and view a cookie while nursing), let alone get the name of the cookie in sharp focus while keeping the infant's hair and rest of the photo in just slightly soft focus?

Update: Time Magazine is on board the controversial sacred right idea this week with its cover photo of a 3 year old boy being nursed while standing on a chair to reach also-standing mom. Per the associated article, extended nursing is part of "attachment parenting", along with co-sleeping (having a child share a parental bed), and baby-wearing (carrying a baby around in a front or back pack or sling.)

Personally, I find the Time photo more questionable than the Oreo one, in that the 3 year old boy involved may face peer pressure from weaned classmates, and the possibility of a helicopter parent.

Why Academia is so Partisan

Interesting article here.
"Haidt (a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and a former liberal who became a centrist in the process of conducting this research) finds that liberals and conservatives alike form their political beliefs according to three values: caring for the weak, fairness, and liberty. Yet conservatives also hold to three other values: loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity. This accounts in part for the liberal failure to understand conservative viewpoints.
...
When you look at the three values that conservatives (according to Haidt) honor but liberals do not — loyalty, respect for authority, and sanctity — these are precisely the values that are flouted in the precincts of American academe. The result is a more impoverished moral imagination amongst students, a stubborn inability to understand the beliefs and the motives of conservatives, and thus the imputation of nefarious motives to those irrational conservatives who do not see things in the ways the illuminati do. If you don’t believe that this has contributed to the partisanship we’ve observed in recent years — particularly the exceedingly nasty way in which liberals in general have responded to the Tea Party movement, to social conservatives and generally to anyone who refers too much to moral sanctity and loyalty to American traditions and institutions, then I think you’re wearing exactly the kind of blinders Haidt talks about."
Hat tip: Instapundit.

Update:
The same research is mentioned today in the Volokh Conspiracy, regarding how legal elites underestimated the case against the health care individual mandate.
"I’ve heard Paul Clement (among others) explain, you can’t effectively advocate your own position until you truly understand the other side."

See also Peter Suderman in Reason
"Moderates and conservatives were the most able to think like their liberal political opponents. 'Liberals,' he reports, 'were the least accurate, especially those who describe themselves as "very liberal.”'

Liberals, on the other hand, have a different theory. The Court is just a bunch of partisan hacks"

Lessons our Park District could learn from its defeated referendum

The $48 million bond referendum proposed by the Arlington Heights Park District in this year's primary election was defeated. Here are some ideas the district might consider before trying again:

1 Don't be tone deaf! Asking for one of the largest tax increases ever in the middle of the worst recession in seventy years, while other area taxing bodies are intentionally not increasing their tax levy at all, and with 400 local homes currently in foreclosure was just begging for opposition.

2 Be honest! Much of the public debate about the referendum was due to the district not being fully honest about how it would affect taxes for an average family. The full truth came out eventually, but left voters wondering what else was still hidden.

3 Be a good steward of what you already have! Allegations of district employees being provided vehicles for personal use at no charge, even on vacation, are not the way to convince voters to trust you with more resources. Nor is knowing you already have resources to do part of what the referendum proposed, but just didn't want to use that money.

4 Rather than borrowing to redo four parks at once now, to be repaid over 25 years, how about redoing the four parks one at a time, as you have cash to do so? That would cost much less, be paid for sooner, and not saddle our grandchildren with debts they had no voice in approving.

5 Keeping up with the Joneses is not a good reason to go into debt. Just because another suburb has something doesn't mean we have to have one.

Great Quote

"Any power that government has to do something you like will invariably be used for something you abhor. ... Reduce the scope of government, and we reduce the culture war, while promoting true tolerance of divergent viewpoints."
-Matt Welch in Reason (May, 2012)

Stuff mom and dad said

Nine years ago, in the original version of this blog, I posted some sayings of my Dad. Today I found myself remembering two from Mom:

"You'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar."

and

"If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all."


Here again are the ones from Dad:

"Another good story spoiled by an eyewitness."

"Never let the facts interfere with a good story."

"Often wrong, but never in doubt."

"It's no harder to arrive on time than to arrive late."

"It costs no more to keep the gas tank full than it does to keep it empty."

"Never borrow except for your first car and first home."

"Graft, inefficiency and corruption run rife."

"Never a borrower or a lender be."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

"...and if I had wings, I could fly."

"Experience keeps a dear school, where only fools need learn."

"Never lend any more money to friends or relatives than you would be willing to give them as a gift."

"Well ain't that a fine kettle of fish?"

"That's a lazy man's load."

"Fish and guests spoil after three days."

"Just one more thing to go wrong."

"If it had been a snake, it would have bit you."

(Hat tip to Ben Franklin for at least two of these.)