Common Sense Comes To The Courtroom

Townhall posted an article yesterday about a recent court decision in Arizona. Arizona’s Supreme Court ruled that DACA recipients are no longer eligible for “in-state” tuition.

The article reports:

The state’s attorney general Mark Brnovich welcomed the ruling as his office has continually argued that colleges and universities were violating state and federal laws by allowing DACA recipients to pay in-state tuition rates.

“While people can disagree what the law should be, I hope we all can agree that the attorney general must enforce the law as it is, not as we want it to be,” the statement said.

In-state tuition at Arizona State University is $9,834 for the next school year. Non-resident tuition is $27,618. At Maricopa Community Colleges, residents pay $86 per credit. Non-residents pay $241 per credit.

This decision makes sense to me–if DACA recipients are not actually citizens, how can they be considered legal residents of a state? There is no reason for them to be given preferential treatment over American citizens.

 

 

Freedom Of Speech In The Classroom?

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about freedom of speech in American classrooms. There is a group of Democratic Representatives that have decided that it is time to destroy books that disagree with what they believe.

The article reports:

Three senior House Democrats asked U.S. teachers Monday to destroy a book written by climate scientists challenging the environmentalist view of global warming.

The Democrats were responding to a campaign by the conservative Heartland Institute copies of the 2015 book, “Why Climate Scientists Disagree About Global Warming” to about 200,000 science teachers. Democratic Reps. Bobby Scott of the Committee on Education, Raúl M. Grijalva of the Committee on Natural Resources, and Eddie Bernice Johnson of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology all issued a statement telling teachers to trash the book.

“Public school classrooms are no place for anti-science propaganda, and I encourage every teacher to toss these materials in the recycling bin,” Scott said. “If the Heartland Institute and other climate deniers want to push a false agenda on global warming, our nation’s schools are an inappropriate place to drive that agenda.”

The book’s three authors all hold doctorates and taught climate or related science at the university level. The book was written by former Arizona State University climatologist Dr. Craig D. Idso, James Cook University marine geology and paleontology professor Robert M. Carter, and University of Virginia environmental scientist Dr. Fred Singer.

I would like to know the basis for the Democrat Representatives’ declaration that the authors of this book are anti-science. The authors look pretty well educated in their fields. What is the scientific background of the Representatives?

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is truly amazing. Eventually Representative Raúl M. Grijalva of the Committee on Natural Resources decides that the problem of not having agreement on global warming can be placed at the feet of the Koch brothers. I guess everyone needs a target to blame.

Who Paid For This Study?

Yesterday The Washington Post posted an article reporting a study that showed female-named hurricanes kill more people than male-named hurricanes.

The article reports:

Female-named storms have historically killed more because people neither consider them as risky nor take the same precautions, the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes.

Researchers at the University of Illinois and Arizona State University examined six decades of hurricane death rates according to gender, spanning  1950 and 2012.  Of the 47 most damaging hurricanes, the female-named hurricanes produced an average of 45 deaths compared to 23 deaths in male-named storms, or almost double the number of fatalities.  (The study excluded Katrina and Audrey, outlier storms that would skew the model).

The difference in death rates between genders was even more pronounced when comparing strongly masculine names versus strongly feminine ones.

We have been naming storms after women since 1950 and men since 1979. That means that there were 30 years of female-named storms before there were male-named storms. Of course there would be more female storms with higher death rates–there were more female storms. I really do wonder about the validity of their research.

The article explains that the study was based on questions to individuals–not actual storm history:

To test the hypothesis the gender of the storm names impacts people’s judgments about a storm, the researchers set up 6 experiments presenting a series of questions to between 100 to 346 people.  The sexism showed up again.

Respondents predicted male hurricanes to be more intense the female hurricanes in one exercise.  In another exercise, the hurricane sex affected how respondents said they would prepare for a hurricane.

“People imagining a ‘female’ hurricane were not as willing to seek shelter,” Shavitt said. “The stereotypes that underlie these judgments are subtle and not necessarily hostile toward women – they may involve viewing women as warmer and less aggressive than men.”

Hurricanes have been named since 1950.  Originally, only female names were used; male names were introduced into the mix in 1979.

That’s not a study–it’s a survey.

The Inmates Have Obviously Taken Over The Asylum

Yesterday Bizpacreview reported that ROTC members were forced to parade around the Temple University campus in Arizona in red high heels. I am not talking about female ROTC members–I am talking about male ROTC members. The exercise was supposed to raise awareness about assault against women. I suspect that the only awareness they raised was an awareness of how miserable your feet feel after doing a lot of walking in high heels.

This is one of the photos:

rotc article

The article reported:

For every social media proponent of the event, there were many more who voiced their opposition.

“Who’s the rocket scientist that thought this up and how much did it cost the taxpayers and the soldiers?” said one Facebook user.

“Extremely offensive,” read another.

“I don’t get the point here,” wrote a frustrated Facebook user, and added possibly the most relevant question of all, “How does forcing a person in uniform to wear high heels relate to sexual assault against women?????”

The sound you hear is that of the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves.