Progress and Morality

 

Moral progress in history lies not so much in the improvement of the moral code as in the enlargement of the area within which it is applied.

– Will Durant, Our Oriental Heritage, p. 101

 

Crocker Blocker Shocker!

In 1878, railroad millionaire Charles Crocker decided to buy up the lots surrounding his mansion on San Francisco’s Nob Hill to improve his view of the surrounding vistas. He reached agreements with all the neighbors except for German undertaker Nicholas Yung, who refused to sell.

“I would have been happier than a condor in the sky,” Crocker wrote, “except for that crazy undertaker.”

His solution was pure spite: He built a 40-foot fence around Yung’s cottage on three sides, spoiling his view in hopes that he would sell. The fence can be seen behind the central mansion in this photo; only the chimneys of Yung’s house project above it.

“How gloomy our house became, how sad,” Yung’s daughter later wrote. “All we could see out our windows was the blank wood of the rich man’s fury. … The flowers in the garden all died, and our lawn turned brown, while inside the house everything felt perpetually damp.”

Yung held out nonetheless — according to some reports he mounted a 10-foot coffin atop the wall facing Crocker’s house — and the two maintained a senseless deadlock for years. Yung died in 1880 and Crocker in 1888; only then, when the mansion was sold to a new owner, did Yung’s heirs relent and sell their lot.

You didn’t mess with Chuck Crocker!  But my sympathies lie with the Yungs.

Imagine Crocker trying to get his “spite fence” approved by San Francisco’s Planning Commission today.

Via: http://www.futilitycloset.com/

 

Husband Puts Wife on “No-Fly” List, Keeps Her Away for 3 Years

Every once in awhile, those staid, proper, stiff-upper-lip Brits do something really wild:

An immigration officer tried to rid himself of his wife by adding her name to a list of terrorist suspects.

He used his access to security databases to include his wife on a watch list of people banned from boarding flights into Britain because their presence in the country is ‘not conducive to the public good’.

As a result the woman was unable for three years to return from Pakistan after travelling to the county to visit family.

The tampering went undetected until the immigration officer was selected for promotion and his wife name was found on the suspects’ list during a vetting inquiry.

Moral of the story: Don’t try to rise above your station.

Via: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351937/Immigration-officer-fired-putting-wife-list-terrorists-stop-flying-home.html#ixzz1CxGClVxn

 

 

A lot of work to be done!



Today is the 25th anniversary of Leon Klinghoffer’s murder by Palestinian terrorists.

Klinghoffer and his wife Marilyn were celebrating their 36th wedding anniversary with a Mediterranean cruise on the liner Achille Lauro.  Palestinians seized the ship, murdered Mr. Klinghoffer, an American Jew, as he sat in his wheelchair, then forced the crew to shove his  body into the sea.  His corpse eventually washed up on the Syrian coast.

The Foreign Secretary of the PLO initially claimed that Mrs. Klinghoffer had killed her husband for the insurance money, but the PLO eventually had to admit responsibility in the face of so many witnesses to the shooting.

Last year, the leader of the terrorists gained early release from an Italian prison “for good behavior.”

Mrs. Klinghoffer, who died of colon cancer a few months after her husband’s murder, must have had incredible strength of spirit.  Her call to her daughters from the Achille Lauro included the admonition,

Do your crying now. We have a lot of work when I come home.”

She did not want her husband’s death to be in vain.  And the Klinghoffers’ daughters, Lisa and Ilsa, still work to keep their father’s memory alive.

Sadly, terrorism is still an accepted tactic in much of the world.  So this 25th anniversary is a reminder that all of us still have a lot of work to do.

Links:  Article on Klinghoffer family

Article on terrorist’s early release

 

 

 

Whoops! Neo-Nazi Couple Learn They’re Jewish

How do you say “irony” in Polish?

Two Polish neo-Nazis who were childhood sweethearts and later became skinheads have discovered what for them is a shocking family secret: They’re actually Jewish.

Pawel and Ola, identified only by their first names, are the subject of a CNN documentary about Poles rediscovering their Jewish roots generations after their ancestors hid their religious identities to escape persecution during World War II.

A few years ago, Ola found out from Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute that both she and her husband are technically Jews. “It was unbelievable — it turned out that we had Jewish roots. It was a shock,” she said.

At the time, she and Pawel were active in Warsaw’s neo-Nazi movement. “I was a nationalist 100 percent. Back then when we were skinheads it was all about white power… that Jews were the biggest plague and the worst evil of this world,” Pawel said.

Both 33, they’ve now embraced their Jewish identity and are active in their local orthodox synagogue.

via Neo-Nazi Couple Find Out They’re Jewish.

 

Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’

This is explosive.  So watch the mainstream media ignore or downplay it.

Background: the Dept. of Justice had substantively won a civil rights case for voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party.  Nonetheless, the Obama DOJ suddenly dismissed the case,  to the consternation of the judge and several career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division of DOJ.

Now, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is investigating whether the DOJ refuses to prosecute violations of voting rights if the victims are white.

The Justice Department is ignoring civil rights cases that involve white victims and wrongly abandoned a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party last year, a top department official testified Friday. He called the department’s conduct a “travesty of justice.”

Christopher Coates, former voting chief for the department’s Civil Rights Division, spoke under oath Friday morning before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in a long-awaited appearance that had been stonewalled by the Justice Department for nearly a year.

Coates discussed in depth the DOJ’s decision to dismiss intimidation charges against New Black Panther members who were videotaped outside a Philadelphia polling place in 2008 dressed in military-style uniforms — one was brandishing a nightstick — and allegedly hurling racial slurs.

The case has drifted in and out of the limelight over the past year as the commission has struggled to investigate it. Former Justice official J. Christian Adams fueled the controversy when he testified in July and accused his former employer of showing “hostility” toward cases that involved white victims and black defendants. Nearly three months later, Coates backed up Adams’ claims. In lengthy and detailed testimony, he said the department cultivates a “hostile atmosphere” against “race-neutral enforcement” of the Voting Rights Act.

In general, I think a Republican take-over of the House and/or Senate could help Mr. Obama’s 2012 reelection prospects, due to the potential for triangulation that it would offer him.

However, Republicans in control of either house could hold hearings to investigate matters such as DOJ’s alleged refusal to protect the civil rights of white victims.  Those hearings would be political dynamite.

via FOXNews.com – Voting Rights Official Calls Dismissal of Black Panther Case a ‘Travesty of Justice’.

 

Over 230,000 Japanese 100-year-olds “missing”

MacArthur would love the irony: Old Japanese never die, they just fade away.

More than 230,000 elderly people in Japan who are listed as being aged 100 or over are unaccounted for, officials said following a nationwide inquiry.

An audit of family registries was launched last month after the remains of the man thought to be Tokyo’s oldest were found at his family home.

Relatives are accused of fraudulently receiving his pension for decades.

Perhaps the Japanese are not as long-lived as we’ve been told.   And these are not minor errors:

Officials have found that hundreds of the missing would be at least 150 years old if still alive.

The Justice Ministry said some of those unaccounted for may have died as long ago as World War II, possibly during the post-war turmoil.

Sounds like record-keeping in Chicago or Philadelphia!  Ah, well, so long as they vote early and vote often.

via BBC News – More than 230,000 Japanese centenarians ‘missing’.

 

Clean People Feel Morally Superior

New studies show that people who are (or feel) physically clean are more inclined to make harsher moral judgments.

The study, with the somewhat Victorian-sounding name of “A clean self can render harsh moral judgment” was conducted by Chen-Bo Zhong at Northwestern University and appears in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.

Some 58 undergrads were invited to a lab filled with spotless new equipment. Half of the students were asked to clean their hands with antiseptic wipe, so as not to soil the shiny surfaces. Afterward all the students rated the morality of six societal issues — smoking, illegal drug use, pornography, profane language, littering and adultery — on an 11-point scale ranging from very moral to very immoral. Those who’d wiped their hands made far-harsher judgments than those who didn’t.

“Participants who cleansed their hands before rating the social issues judged these issues to be more morally wrong compared to those who did not cleanse their hands,” the researchers report.

In a follow-up study, hundreds of participants were told to read a short passage that began, “My hair feels clean and light. My breath is fresh. My clothes are pristine and like new,” made harsher moral judgments about 16 social issues compared to those primed to feel dirty by reading a passage that read, “My hair feels oily and heavy. My breath stinks. I feel so dirty.”

I’d really like to see this tested cross-culturally  (does the effect appear across cultures?) and over time (how long does the effect last?).

via Clean People Feel Morally Superior | Wired Science | Wired.com.

 

Fascinating Story of Love, Politics, and Betrayal

The love story of Nikolai Bukharin and Anna Larina, and what Stalin did to them and their infant son.

One of the most interesting interviews I’ve ever heard, with the author, Paul Gregory, at: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2010/07/gregory_on_poli.html

Same day, I ordered the book.

 

Honor Killing in America

These are the Said sisters, Amina and Sarah — two pretty Texas teens who were brutally murdered on New Year’s Day 2008. The main suspect: their father, Yaser. Their crime: dating non-Muslim boys. Their penalty: honor killings.

Tonight (Friday, August 6) at 10 p.m. eastern, Fox News will broadcast Bill Hemmer’s one-hour special investigating the case, and the risk Muslim girls face at the hands of their male relatives if they act too . . . American.

via Honor Killing in America – The Corner – National Review Online.

 

Incentive Pay for Preachers

Why is this man smiling? Now we know!

ANOTHER idea I’d not thought of: according to a new study, the Methodist church gives its ministers an incentive payment for bringing in more congregants.

Of course, not all ministers avoid self-interest in their work.  But this seems to be making the matter overly explicit.

And, according to the study’s abstract, the payment is higher for attracting parishioners who switch from toher Methodist congregations.  That seems to be exactly the wrong incentive!

See: “Is a Higher Calling Enough? Incentive Compensation in the Church” by Jay C. Hartzell, of the University of Texas at Austin – Department of Finance, et al.

Abstract:

We study the compensation and productivity of more than 2,000 Methodist ministers in a 43-year panel data set. The church appears to use pay-for-performance incentives for its clergy, as their compensation follows a sharing rule by which pastors receive approximately 3% of the incremental revenue from membership increases. Ministers receive the strongest rewards for attracting new parishioners who switch from other congregations within their denomination. Monetary incentives are weaker in settings where ministers have less control over their measured performance.

via SSRN-Is a Higher Calling Enough? Incentive Compensation in the Church by Jay Hartzell, Christopher Parsons, David Yermack.

 

BP’s New Scandal: Secret Ticket Request Line

According to Mother Jones, for years BP has used a secret phone line to provide California state officials with free tickets to events at its Arco Arena in Sacramento:

For more than a decade, BP has operated a hush-hush phone line that California lawmakers can call to request box seats to NBA games and concerts at the Sacramento stadium named after its West Coast subsidiary.

In the past five years, BP has given state officials more than 1,200 complimentary tickets to the Arco Arena, hosting them in its corporate suite to see Sacramento Kings games, World Extreme Cagefighting matches, and Britney Spears and Lil Wayne concerts. Getting the tickets is as easy as calling the BP ticket request line, an exclusive, unpublished phone number that appears to exist for the sole purpose of granting freebies to lawmakers, regulators, and their staffs.

The mechanics of this scam sound like a spy novel, or a drug deal:

You make a request, leave it on the voicemail, and at some date the tickets either magically appear or they don’t,” says a legislative consultant who gave me the ticket line’s number and spoke on condition of anonymity. “They don’t talk to you; you just see ‘em or you don’t.” The ticket line’s message was taken down sometime in the past week, shortly after I began my reporting.

Tickets just “magically appear or they don’t”.  Well, then.  It’s okay, because we never talked to anyone.

Besides, I’m sure that all those hard-working politicians and bureaucrats in Sacramento deserve those freebies.  After all, they’re doing such a great job running the state.

Come to think of it, World Extreme Cagefighting is a good description of the California legislature.

via BP’s Secret Ticket Request Line | Mother Jones.

 

Vaseline Issues “Skin-Whitening” App for Facebook – Tech Talk – CBS News

For Pete’s sake!

Vaseline has introduced a skin-lightening Facebook application designed to allow users to lighten their skin color in the profile pictures displayed on the social network site.

The company has chosen Bollywood star Shahid Kapur to promote the application as well as its other skin-lightening creams for men. In the widget promising to “Transform Your Face On Facebook With Vaseline Men,” Kapur’s face is presented divided into dark and fair halves.

“We started campaign advertising for the application from the second week of June and the response has been pretty phenomenal,” Pankaj Parihar from global advertising firm Omnicom, which designed the campaign, said in an interview with the Australian web site Adelaide Now.

via Vaseline Issues “Skin-Whitening” App for Facebook – Tech Talk – CBS News.

 

Nevermind! Govt. report says health care will cost more

The first in-depth, independent review of the effects of the recently-passed health care legislation contains very bad news for the Administration:

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president’s twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.

It’s a worrisome assessment for Democrats.

In particular, concerns about Medicare could become a major political liability in the midterm elections. The report projected that Medicare cuts could drive about 15 percent of hospitals and other institutional providers into the red, “possibly jeopardizing access” to care for seniors.

The report from Medicare’s Office of the Actuary carried a disclaimer saying it does not represent the official position of the Obama administration.

This is no big surprise.  Anyone not in a coma had to know that the Administration’s claim that the new law would cut costs was not credible.

This does raise a big question for those who believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the myth of a non-partisan press: Where were the mainstream media and their tough questions during all those months that the Administration was making such cost-savings claims?

The media’s silence was deafening, and strongly implies a complicity in helping the Administration sell its program.

Accountability journalism: nuts.  Speaking truth to power: only to Republicans in power.

At this crucial time in our history, when we’re dealing with issues important to the present and crucial to the future, we have an Emily Litella government being “monitored” by a supine, Tickle Me Elmo press corps.

The mainstream media does not seem to be able to help itself.  But the market may force change: I expect that the MSM will continue to lose viewers and readers so long as it persists in reserving the hard questions only for conservatives.

via Report says health care will cover more, cost more – Yahoo! News.

UPDATE: It gets worse: According to the American Spectator‘s  “Washington Prowler” blog, the administration suppressed the Medicare Actuary’s report, which was submitted to the Secretary of HHS a week before the vote on the health care bill.

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”

Apparently, honesty, like taxes, are for the little people.

via  http://spectator.org/archives/2010/04/26/what-lies-beneath

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama’s health care “reform” law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius’s staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

“The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote,” says an HHS source. “Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think.”

 

Piracy: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship

In this image released by the Royal Dutch Navy Monday April 5, 2010, a boarding party slides down a rope from the frigate Tromp’s Lynx helicopter onto the mv Taipan. The Dutch Defense Ministry says one of its Navy frigates has freed a German merchant ship and its 15-strong crew from pirates off the coast of Somalia after the Dutch ship’s helicopter fired on the captured freighter’s bridge and arrested 10 pirates who had boarded the ship on Monday morning about 800 kilometers (500 miles) east of Somalia. The German ship’s crew members had locked themselves into a secure area of the ship and were unharmed. One Dutch marine was slightly injured during the boarding. The Defense Ministry statement says that despite damage to its bridge, the German container ship was able to resume its voyage. (AP Photo/Royal Dutch Navy)

Way to go, Dutch!

via The Associated Press: Dutch sidestep EU red tape to rescue German ship.