Archive for June 2010

Isaac Newton, notwithstanding his modest explanation that he had merely seen farther than others because he had stood on the shoulders of giants, was a genius, and nowhere was this more evident than in his celebrated discovery of the Law of Universal Gravitation. Taking the voluminous and befuddling data Johannes Kepler—Newton compressed everything into a simple formula that an Algebra I student could understand. that had been accumulated by his predecessors—giants or those of normal height, notably the data of the celebrated German astronomer

(For those who love the details, the formula is F=G×m1m2/r2 , where F is the attractive force between two bodies, G is the Universal Gravitational Constant, m1 and m2 are the masses of the two bodies, and r is the distance between them. But if you’ve forgotten your algebra, don’t stay up trying to remember it. This is not a mathematical treatise, and Newton’s work is not a prerequisite to what I am about to say.)

In finding his law of gravitation, Newton used his superlative power of generalization, his ability to move from the particular to the general, to see in separate occurrences an overall pattern. And in doing so he explained celestial riddles that had plagued philosophers since the time of the ancients.

A more prosaic example is that of the auto mechanic. An experienced mechanic knows from his observations that, if a car won’t start, the first suspicion is a dead battery. He couples his wits with his experience and makes a generalization which aids him in his work. He checks the battery before he decides to change the starter motor.

Generalizations are a staple in the medical field. The nurse at the triage desk knows what pain in the left arm, combined with shortness of breath and nausea, means, and she will dispatch the patient to the cardiac section without taking the time to ask him for his insurance card.

Police, too, use the skill of generalization. With a map showing where crimes have been committed plotted on it, they spot high-crime areas and assign more officers to patrol those regions.

There are situations when an ability to generalize can help a person to avoid danger. Who can forget the oft-repeated example of Jesse Jackson, who once explained how, if he heard footsteps closing on him from behind in a dark night, he would be relieved to turn and see that those approaching were white. The implication is that if he didn’t like what he saw he would take defensive action: he would speed up, turn onto a side street, hail a taxi, or do whatever came to mind.

Everyone, I believe, will applaud Newton, and the auto mechanic, and the triage nurse, and at least sympathize with Jesse Jackson. Or with President Obama, who recounted a similar experience in Dreams For My Father. We commend them for their intelligence, and for their roles in establishing and maintaining the society we all enjoy.

But the police? Well, now, that’s an entirely different story. They can expect few commendations, because, you see, they are not generalizing, oh, no. They are profiling! profiling!
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President Obama’s Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is supposed to represent American workers. What you need to know is that this longtime open-borders sympathizer has always had a rather radical definition of “American.” At a Latino voter registration project conference in Los Angeles many years ago, Solis asserted to thunderous applause, “We are all Americans, whether you are legalized or not.”

That’s right. The woman in charge of enforcing our employment laws doesn’t give a hoot about our immigration laws — or about the fundamental distinction between those who followed the rules in pursuit of the American dream and those who didn’t.

While in Congress, she opposed strengthening the border fence, supported expansion of illegal alien benefits (including driver’s licenses and in-state tuition discounts), embraced sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with federal homeland security officials to enforce immigration laws, and aggressively championed a mass amnesty. Solis was steeped in the pro-illegal alien worker organizing movement in Southern California and was buoyed by amnesty-supporting Big Labor groups led by the Service Employees International Union. She has now caused a Capitol Hill firestorm over her new taxpayer-funded advertising and outreach campaign to illegal aliens regarding fair wages:
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THE oracle at Delphi had two maxims posted above the entrance to her chamber, for the edification of those who sought her prophecy: “Know thyself” and “Nothing in excess”. Self-knowledge is often the hardest to learn and the least welcome, but the brutal truth is best. Humanity had better hope so, anyway, for the truth will soon out for the entire species.

June 26th marks the tenth anniversary of the reading of the human genome—the 3-billion-letter-long message that promises self-knowledge to humanity. Each letter is a pair of chemical bases that has accumulated over the 3.8 billion years that life has existed on Earth.

Viewed that way—the addition to the message of slightly less than a base-pair a year—the evolution of something as complex as a human being is not such an incredible journey. But it is still an amazing one. Some of it is lost, as the DNA palimpsest has been erased and re-written. Much is the scribbling of vandals who have broken in and scrawled, “We woz ’ere”, in the barbarian tongue of viruses, not yet erased by nature’s librarian, natural selection. And plenty of the rest, the bit that should make sense, can be read but is not yet understood.

But it will be. Humanity’s foibles will be laid bare. The species’s history, from its tentative beginning in north-east Africa to its current imperial dominion, has already been revealed, just through being able to read the genome. It is now possible, too, to compare Homo sapiens with his closest relative—not the living chimpanzee, with whom he parted company perhaps 5m years ago, but the extinct Neanderthal, a true human. That will do what philosophers have dreamed of, but none has yet accomplished: show just what it is that makes Homo sapiens unique. The genome will answer, too, the age-old question of original sin. By showing what is nature, it will reveal what is nurture—and thus just how flexible and perfectible the human animal really is.
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Gov. Jan Brewer said Friday that most illegal immigrants entering Arizona are being used to transport drugs across the border, an assertion that critics slammed as exaggerated and racist.

Brewer said the motivation of “a lot” of the illegal immigrants is to enter the United States to look for work, but that drug rings press them into duty as drug “mules.”

“I believe today, under the circumstances that we’re facing, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in,” Brewer said.

“There’s strong information to us that they come as illegal people wanting to come to work. Then they are accosted and they become subjects of the drug cartel,” she said.

Brewer’s office later issued a statement in response to media reports of her comments. It said most human smuggling into Arizona is under the direction of drug cartels, which “are by definition smuggling drugs.”

“Unless Gov. Brewer can provide hard data to substantiate her claim that most undocumented people crossing into Arizona are ‘drug mules,’ she must retract such an outrageous statement,” said Oscar Martinez, a University of Arizona history professor whose teaching and research focuses on border issues. “If she has no data and is just mouthing off for political reasons, as I believe she is doing, then she must apologize to the people of Arizona for lying to them so blatantly.”

Sen. Jesus Ramon Valdes, a member of the Mexican Senate’s northern border affairs commission, called Brewer’s comments racist and irresponsible.

“Traditionally, migrants have always been needy, humble people who in good faith go looking for a way to better the lives of their families,” Ramon Valdes said.

A Border Patrol spokesman said illegal immigrants do sometimes carry drugs across the border, but he said he couldn’t provide numbers because smugglers are turned over to prosecutors.
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Oh, there’s MUCH more to know about Sheriff Joe!

Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs.  Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay.

The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays.  Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily.  He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who’d like to adopt an animal.  He has literally taken stray dog s off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.

The best part?  His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I adopted a Weinaramer from a MaricopaCounty shelter two years ago.  He was neutered and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip inserted the day we got him…  Cost us $78.

The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day.  Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc.  He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.

Until recently, hardly anyone was questioning Head Start’s importance.

In the Milwaukee area alone, more than 4,000 students are enrolled in Head Start. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) has said, the program is “important” to the “future success” of low-income children.

Head Start, created in 1965, is intended to provide disadvantaged children a pre-school boost. But before now, no one knew whether the program, after a total taxpayer investment exceeding $170 billion, was living up to its promise.

In the late 1990s, Congress finally mandated a national evaluation to measure its effectiveness. This year, the results were finally released: Former Head Start participants were no better off than their non-Head Start peers by the end of first grade.

Using random assignment, the national evaluation placed almost 5,000 children eligible for Head Start into two treatment conditions based on a lottery. The children who won the lottery were awarded “free” (taxpayer paid) access to pre-kindergarten Head Start services; the others either didn’t attend preschool or sought out other alternatives.

The national evaluation tracked the progress of 3- and 4-year-olds entering Head Start through the first grade. Compared to similarly situated children, access to the program failed to raise the cognitive abilities of Head Start participants on 41 measures. The language, literacy, math skills and school performance of participating children all failed to improve.
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California welfare recipients are able to use state-issued debit cards to withdraw cash on gaming floors in more than half of the casinos in the state, a Los Angeles Times review of records found.

The cards, provided by the Department of Social Services to help recipients feed and clothe their families, work in automated teller machines at 32 of 58 tribal casinos and 47 of 90 state-licensed poker rooms, the review found.

State officials said Wednesday they were working to determine how much money had been withdrawn from casino ATMs by people using the welfare debit cards.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who learned of the issue when asked to comment for this story, promised to take immediate action.

“We have instructed our vendors to prohibit these cards from being accepted at ATMs located in casinos and card rooms,” Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said Wednesday. “It is reprehensible that anyone would use taxpayer money for anything other than its intended purpose.”

Administration officials said the social services agency contracts with a private ATM network to handle the electronic transfer of benefits to people on welfare, and hadn’t noticed that the taxpayer money was being withdrawn at gambling establishments.
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Ludwig Enterprises intends to use digital television signals to transmit up to 50 digital audio channels in each of its market areas. It’s an effort to deploy what it says is the first national ethnic radio network.

Ludwig Enterprises is a publicly traded company based in Pompano Beach, Fla. The company says its new radio, TheOne Radio, uses an available portion of the data stream of the newly issued ATSC digital television signals for broadcasting up to 50 new digital radio channels in each of Ludwig’s geographical market areas. The radios receive 50 channels of specialized audio with programming targeted to ethnic, senior citizens and youth “currently underserved by commercial broadcasters.”

“Ludwig will be all digital, all the time, in all locations, rivaling the quality existent on HD or satellite radio,” states the company; it says its main rival is subscription-based satellite radio. “The One” programming will be advertiser-supported. Ludwidg also plans to make money off of program syndication.
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With widespread attention focused on Arizona’s tough new law against illegal immigration — and a measure approved this week in the small town of Fremont, Neb. — similar proposals are under consideration across the country.

Five states — South Carolina, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Michigan — are looking at Arizona-style legislation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. NDN, a Washington think tank and advocacy group, said lawmakers in 17 other states had expressed support for similar measures.

Since it was adopted in April, the Arizona legislation, which gives law enforcement officers the power to check the immigration status of anyone suspected of being in the country illegally, has triggered bitter debate and been challenged in court by advocacy groups. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said last week that the Justice Department plans to sue Arizona over the law, although a department spokesman has said the matter is under review.

This week, the spotlight shifted to rural Fremont, which narrowly passed an ordinance that would outlaw hiring illegal immigrants or renting property to them.
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An interestingly-written PowerPoint presentation from the City of Seattle caught our attention recently. As Seattle moves forward with the Mercer mess construction project, a multi-year and multi-stage project to basically re-make the South Lake Union neighborhood, it has set up rules and regulations in concurrence with federal and state regulations for working with contractors and subcontractors.

Some of the money set aside for the Mercer Corridor Project comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the “stimulus package” President Obama signed into law in early 2009. As stipulated by federal requirements, the city must set aside a certain amount of work for disadvantaged business enterprises (DBEs) — these are businesses owned and operated by women or minorities — and certified by the state’s Office of Minority and Women’s Business Enterprises.

The state DOT says, “The purpose of the MWBE program is to provide maximum practicable opportunity for firms owned and operated by minorities and women in public works projects and procurement.”

The city of Seattle recently hosted a pre-bid meeting to let contractors and subcontractors know how to comply with training requirements for minority apprentices. Apparently the current system is complex enough to merit extra explanatory meetings. On the PowerPoint presentation (slide 7) is the bullet point telling interested subcontractors that they “Must use under represented groups — No white males w/o WSDOT approval and extensive good faith effort documentation.”
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