Archive for January, 2010

Of course as the technology gets smarter…

Posted: January 13, 2010 by datechguy in tech
Tags: ,

…so has the spam.

I’ve found that my spam over the years (counting the hiwired blog) has gotten smarter and smarter, to the point where the filters will catch one but miss a nearly identical one.

The phony names, semi generic messages etc are getting better too.

I’m sure other bloggers see more of this than me, but considering how prevalent it is I’m shocked that there are some sites that still don’t moderate comments.

…he has all the tools of classical liberalism. You can’t help but respect such a man even when disagreeing with him. Michael J. Totten’s site contains part one of a two part interview that I suspect a lot of people missed last week with all the political news out there. One gem from it:

Hitchens: Here’s a way of throwing an Oregon progressive into a state of confusion: ask him or her if they’ve read the latest Al Qaeda pronouncements on the Hindu question. Or, shall we put it another way, a billion infidels, brown-skinned, third world, living in a secular democracy, and all of them deemed by fatwa as fit only for slaughter.

Who’s the racist here? Me for pointing that out?

Read the whole thing.

stating in big letters that YOU (meaning us) can make educators and students a priority in Washington by voting for Martha Coakley came in the mail today.

Ironically it shows up on the very day that we discover she apparently can’t spellMassachusetts“.

Maybe she should run for Senator from Berkeley.

Vote Brown.

…are as groundskeepers.

Berkeley High School is considering a controversial proposal to eliminate science labs and the five science teachers who teach them to free up more resources to help struggling students.

The proposal to put the science-lab cuts on the table was approved recently by Berkeley High’s School Governance Council, a body of teachers, parents, and students who oversee a plan to change the structure of the high school to address Berkeley’s dismal racial achievement gap, where white students are doing far better than the state average while black and Latino students are doing worse.

Michelle says this:

Such are the wages of political correctness and social justice.

Ironically C. S. Lewis predicted this very thing in his final “Screwtape” story. Screwtape proposes a toast, when his devil address young tempters at their graduation dinner:

I believe the English already use the phrase – “parity of esteem.” An even more drastic scheme is not possible. Children who are fit to proceed to a higher class may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma — Beelzebub, what a useful word! – by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval’s attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I’m as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers – or should I say, nurses? – will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.”

Make no mistake this is just as racist as the Clinton Coffee Quote but unlike the quote in question it’s decisions like this that has the power to cause the result that Bill Clinton was hinting at.

Why any parents of any race would put up with this is beyond me, but you know what? Unless Berkeley is very different than anywhere else; they likely have an elected school committee. Berkeley people are doing this to themselves and thus deserve everything that they are getting from this.

Why anyone would be surprised at this when the president does the same to minority students in DC is beyond me.