Tag Archives: asinine

No Tenure for Teachers

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“The [New York State teachers’] unions late Tuesday were successful in banning student performance in the classroom from the tenure process.”

Say what?! News stories like this drive me nuts. There should be no such thing as tenure for teaching faculty who are not also professional researchers. The latter need tenure to protect them from malicious firing related to unpopular research topics, methodology, or results. Educators who exclusively teach should be held accountable for how well they do their jobs, just like anyone else in any other job. If you are a poor teacher who fails to adequately educate children, your boss should have the right to fire you. Period.

On a tangentially related note, I hate the idea of closed shops. Unions should have to compete with other unions and individual workers. A monopolized workforce is as bad as a monopolized industry.

The Ontological Status of Tobacco

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Tobacco Regulation Smokescreen

Have you ever seen anyone sit down at the breakfast table and pour themselves a big ol’ bowl of cigarettes? Of course not. Why not? Because cigarettes aren’t food, that’s why.

Have you ever seen someone at the drug store waiting for their prescription of Marlboros? Of course not. Why not? Because cigarettes aren’t drugs.

Fatuity, thy name is Chuck Muth. Lots of things – chewing gum and lip balm, for instance – are neither breakfast cereal nor prescription drugs, but they’re still regulated for the sake of public safety. Of course protecting public safety couldn’t possibly be the reason being efforts to regulate tobacco as food and/or drug. Nope; the boogymen in the DNC are to blame.

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Port Authority Transit is Riding Me

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Somebody at Port Authority Transit must have a screw loose.

Port Authority transit cutbacks are biggest in history

The series of bus and trolley changes include eliminating:

  • 124 of 213 weekday bus routes.
  • 55 of 100 Saturday bus routes.
  • 26 of 75 Sunday and holiday bus routes.

Light-rail service would be trimmed by cutting hours of operation and increasing the time between trolleys. Besides reducing the number of daily transit vehicle hours, the changes would reduce the number of one-way vehicle trips by 24 percent and overall ridership by 11 percent, the authority has estimated.

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Plan B is Not Abortifacient

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As any regular reader of this blog is well aware, I’m strongly pro-life. However, I’m ticked off at my own movement right now because of crap like this [emphasis mine]:

"President George Bush shocked the pro-life movement with his support for over-the-counter access to abortion-drug Plan B, also known as the morning-after pill, for adults. However, Plan B ‘ought to require a prescription for minors,’ he said.

[…]

"’President Bush’s implied support of over-the-counter status for the abortion-causing drug Plan B is a betrayal of the pro-life principles he claims to support,’ said Stephen Peroutka, Esq., chairman of the National Pro-Life Action Center."

Let’s get with the program, people. Plan B is not abortifacient. Repeating "abortion" and "Plan B" in the same sentence over and over won’t make it so. As a devout Catholic, I’m no more a fan of Plan B than I am of condoms (or any other form of contraception), but since neither kill unborn children, there’s no just reason for banning them. Unless someone can provide evidence that Plan B causes abortions, I suggest we stop saying it does and move on to other matters. This is a poltical albatross.

[cross-posted at RedBlueChristian]

Update: Apparently, someone at Netscape.com saw fit to link to me as one of the "pro-life advocates [who] acknowledge that use of Plan B is not akin to abortion". I’m flattered by the publicity, but I really hope the inane and fruitless "conversation" going on in the comments over there doesn’t come here. I haven’t read such consistently belligerent and vapid comments since the last time I stopped by Eschaton. I don’t always agree with my readers, but I’m almost always appreciative of them and their ability to discuss matters reasonably and intelligently in the comboxes.

Update: Let Publius know whether you think I’m a "[d]ebunker of [a] commonly-held misconception or [an] advocate of netkookery".

Addendum: Serge at LTI Blog has begun a series of posts about Plan B.

  1. Emergency Contraception: A Review of the Literature
  2. Information from the Manufacturer
  3. Proposed Evidence of Post-Fertilization Effects
  4. Does it Work if Taken After Ovulation?
  5. No Morphological Changes Found in Endometrium
  6. EC: What is its Real Effectiveness?

Mangling, Mishandling, and Misrepresentation of Science in the Plan B Debate (Part II)

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Read Part I of "Mangling, Mishandling, and Misrepresentation of Science in the Plan B Debate"

In all my searching, I have found no studies that support the notion that Plan B acts as an abortifacient. The only two proven methods of action are thickening of the cervical fluid and prevention of ovulation. The manufacturer of Plan B states that it may interefere with implantation, but I strongly suspect that they’re just covering their ass…ets.

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