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Teaching Maths In 1970:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price. What is his profit?

Teaching Maths In 1980:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is 4/5 of the price, or £80. What is his profit?

Teaching Maths In 1990:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is £80. Did he make a profit?

Teaching Maths In 2000:

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for £100. His cost of production is £80 and his profit is £20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

Teaching Maths In 2008:

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of £20. What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers.)

From the ASI blog.

Sex offenders in some parts of England and Wales will be made to take compulsory lie detector tests to see if they are still a danger to the public

The BBC, Sex offenders to face lie tests

Eye-catching policy from MiniJust, there. Trouble is, polygraphs are crap. From the BPS:

that even in the most favourable circumstances polygraphic lie detection accuracy is not high…People who are major threats may
well have strong incentives and sufficient resources to use countermeasures effectively…Research on the polygraph has not progressed over time in the manner of a typical scientific field.

A review of the current scientific status and
fields of application of Polygraphic Deception
Detection (PDF)

Never mind. The money wasted won’t be missed and this lot will be out in the next General Election.

From Charles Johnson and Little Green Footballs

Because it is.

The BBC published an article on the commemmoration of 9/11 in the US. In its first version of the piece, still available in Google Cache, they wrote

On the eve of the anniversary, a top US military commander warned that new tactics were needed to win the conflict in Afghanistan, which the US and its allies invaded three months after 9/11.

They intended to topple the Taleban regime and root out Osama Bin Laden, who the US believes masterminded the attacks.

The BBC has now removed this nod-and-a-wink to 9/11 truthers, conspiracy fruitcakes, Stop The War coalition ‘leftists’ and their fellow-travellers and large numbers in the Islamic world who prefer not to think too hard about some excrescences of the Religion of Peace™. Could I stop paying for the BBC?

Andrew Sullivan’s mad collapse continues. Today, he writes:

Here’s a fascinating glimpse into how the rest of the world is reacting to the Sarah Palin selection. It’s from a classic and peerless British weekly radio panel discussion show, called “Any Questions.”

Bea Campbell:

Let’s imagine that governor Palin was indeed a man. He wouldn’t be interesting. He’d be outrageous. She is outrageous, actually.

Andrew Sullivan, What The Brits Think Of Palin

Perhaps Sullivan has been too long away from the UK to remember who Bea Campbell is, or to grasp that she has been the subject of scorn and ridicule at least since her enthusiastic promulgation of the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic in cahoots with her partner, Judith Jones, who just happened to be the leader of Nottingham Social Services Team Four. It mightn’t have taken so long for Ms Campbell to settle into the slot reserved for harmless eccentrics if she had in fact been harmless – as a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain she excused the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia.

This is a little inadequate even as an informal polling method. From where I sit, in the UK, those Brits – MSM journos aside – paying any attention at all to the Republican VP nomination have taken to Palin in the same way people in the US have welcomed her.

Back in May, visiting Allentown PA, Barack Obama called WXYZ network reporter Peggy Agar, sweetie. Now, in a petulant response to Sarah Palin’s barnstorming speech at the RNC, he’s said that he assumes that

wants to be treated same way guys want to be treated, which means their records are under scrutinty

Excellent assumption there. Nobody would think otherwise. Hardly worth saying…

Where if you support Israel you are called anti-Semitic, where promoting sharia law means you support cultural diversity, where you attack a successful working mother and a pregnant teenage mother and you call yourself a feminist and where you degrade an infant with special needs and are convinced this means you care.

Ghost of a Flea, The Left

Related:

You know your political culture has become morbidly calcified. .

. . .when an unknown moose-hunting soccer mom from some obscure town in Alaska shows up with a passel of kids and thereby presents A Clear and Present Danger to the American Left, simply because she jumbles up so many cultural categories, because she is a feminist not in the Yale Gender Studies sense but the How Do I Reload This Thang way, because she is a woman who in style, history, moxie and femininity is exactly like a normal American feminist and not an Abstract Theory feminist; because she wears makeup and heels and eats mooseburgers. . . they are going to have to kill her, and kill her quick.

Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR, You know your political culture has become morbidly calcified. . .

Draft one, as originally published:

the potential power of Ms. Palin’s electrifying speech

Draft two, as later revised without explanation:

the potential power of Ms. Palin’s speech

Must be bad at the New York Times. Apparently they have to ration their use of electricity

Ace of Spades, NYT Times Now Dowdifying Itself