Having the word "nude" in my posts continues to boost my hit count from first-time visitors. Gotta love that.

Oh, and before I forget, "debbie's boob job". There. That ought to do it.

Anyway.

Not much going on at home other than trying to keep out of the floor installer guys' way. Last night, my dad and I had to fix the stairs going up to the master suite. I've never liked the way it "felt" walking up and down those stairs. The floor installer put a level on them yesterday and found out why: the whole staircase was tilted down. Every step dropped about 3/8" from back to front. So that took up all of last night. I was very tired for some reason, so we went to bed early. That's pretty much our life.

The floors should be completely done today. The next step is getting the doors in and trimmed out so we can put down baseboard molding, then start working on trimming out the windows. I'll probably make a major Home Depot run at some point and pick up one of those small table saws and a good power miter. There is a lot of detail work at this point, and I'd prefer to have decent tools so I don't make a complete hash of it.

Not much really caught my eye while skimming my usual internet sources. It looks like the Year of the Natural Disaster continues. We have Wilma heading towards Florida, and Pakistan is still trying to deal with the aftermath of the earthquake there. I just realized today that I had not mentioned the earthquake since it happened. I guess I'm just getting "disaster fatigue" or something. In any case, you can read all about it here, here, here, here, and here. Wilma went from a tropical storm to a Cat 5 in 24 hours, but it isn't expected to stay at that strength for long. Currently, it is expected to be "only" a Cat 2 by the time it hits Florida. What can I say? What can anyone say except "Hold on; here we go again!" If I ever end up living in a hurricane-prone area (and the more I grow to hate winter, the more likely that becomes) I won't own anything I can't pack up and drive off with, including whatever I live in. In any case, for those that enjoy watching train wrecks, this is where you want to hang out for the next 48 hours.

I received an e-mail today about David Brooks' editorial "Mind Over Muscle" in the New York Times. In it, he discusses that girls do better in many respects in school than boys do. I can't get to the article because it is hidden behind TimesSelect, the latest attempt by a newspaper to charge for access to its web page. But I am pretty sure Brooks is making the same observations I made back in May here and here. I have no idea what conclusions he may come to: I don't know that I have ever read his editorials. But just to reiterate my position: the male and female bell curves have the same median, but different shapes. Our schools, and more and more our colleges as well, are doing two things that favor females. One is that typical male behavior is now considered a mental illness and is treated with a class of drugs that have been known to cause brain damage in pre-pubescent children for forty years. The second is that our schools are geared towards those that fall near the median (say, 95 to 105 IQ). Those left behind (largely male) drop out and become our criminal underclass. Those bored to death (again, largely male) disrupt the classroom until they are drugged into submission and mediocrity. These are our future aerospace engineers, computer chip designers, scientists, etc. I would think it important to consider just what the hell we are doing. Or not. I'm set, and to be selfish, I'm more than happy to have the competition eliminated before they even get out of the starting gate. But I will be dead in 20 or 30 years; anyone planning on living longer may want to give this some thought.

I was also e-mailed a copy of an editorial from a Tampa newspaper on immigration and assimilation. Whenever this topic comes up, I notice a failure to distinguish between illegal and legal immigration, and refuges (who may be here legally or illegally). The editorial focuses on the PC yapping that we offend immigrants with our customs. I will take the points one at a time and respond to them based on my experience and the numerous immigrants I have known.

"...if you wish to become part of our society, learn the language!"

I've never met an immigrant that didn't think it important to learn English. No one fights against Spanish-language instruction harder than immigrant parents who know from bitter experience that a lack of English skills closes far too many doors. If this is meant as some sort of diatribe against those that speak English with an accent, then all I can say is that I am far more concerned about blacks born and raised in the United States that are less capable of speaking standard English than someone fresh off the plane from China.

That's not to say that there are not enclaves along our southern boarder where Spanish is the primary language. But again, one must distinguish between legal immigrants that have made a decision to move here and become part of the United States, and illegal immigrants who largely are here to earn American dollars to take back home with them. The first group will work hard to learn English, and their kids will speak standard English without a problem. The second group has no reason to learn any English above what they are forced to learn. I'm not concerned that this group does not know English; I am concerned that they are here at all.

"'In God We Trust' is our national motto. This is not some Christian, right wing, political slogan. We adopted this motto because Christian men and women, on Christian principles, founded this nation, and this is clearly documented."

Here, the writer is either hoping his audience is ignorant, or is displaying his own. Some of this nation's founders did indeed self-identify as "Christian" although I doubt their theology would be allowed within 100 miles of any modern, evangelical church. But many, including the most prominent, were most certainly not Christians as they denied the deity of Jesus. Thomas Jefferson published his own version of the Gospels that excluded Jesus' miracles and all mention of Jesus' deity. Thomas Payne wrote devastating critiques of the Bible that concluded the whole thing was a fraud. Samuel Adams was a brewer, so you know he was a Satan-worshipper. No self-respecting evangelical church would allow a beer-drinker through the door, not alone someone that brewed the stuff. George Washington was a deist, and so on. Our nation was founded on common law and an intentionally secular government.

And "In God We Trust" is indeed a right-wing political slogan added to our currency in the early 1900's, just as "under God" was a right-wing political slogan added to our pledge in the 1950's. And I have yet to find an immigrant offended by either one. I find a lot of American-born PC police having a problem with them and trying to use offence of immigrants as the excuse for removing them, but not immigrants themselves.

"If Stars and Stripes offend you..."

Again, I have to wonder if the writer has ever laid eyes on an immigrant. Personally, I find flag-wavers to be offensive, but not because of the flag per se, but because the person waving it invariably uses patriotism as an excuse to violate the free-speech rights of anyone they disagree with. But I have never met an immigrant of any stripe that is offended by our national flag. In fact it seems ludicrous to suggest that a legal immigrant that has likely spent years jumping through bureaucratic hoops to get here, or a political refugee that likely risked their life to flee political persecution to seek refuge here, would then complain about something as trivial as a piece of cloth. Only coddled Americans bother to get their panties in a twist over such things. However, I'm sure many of the foreign-born would recognize the kind of person that would write such a editorial, and be disturbed by the similarity to people they just left.

And I should have known that Snopes would have something on this. It wasn't an editorial in a Tampa newspaper, it was a letter to the editor of a local Georgia newspaper. I also find it interesting (and somewhat disturbing) that a Google search turned up thousands of sites uncritically posting this piece.

And that is really all I have time for.