Probitas?

Is it just me?

We were sitting in the audience at Trip's school, watching Les Mis, and the girls behind us kept chatting. During intermission, my mother turned and asked them to please stop. Instead of apologizing, they denied that they had been talking during the performance.

I recall a laboratory class I was teaching once: One student was chewing on the end of her hair, and I asked her to stop, reminding her that there were things in that lab she might not wish to ingest accidentally. She became indignant, denying that she ever chewed on her hair.

More recently, some kids threw a snowball at my car (hey, kids do stupid things without thinking...). I stopped, and they all ran away, except for two girls who stood there and said (as their mother came out of the house) that no one had thrown any snowballs.

In Annika's German class, some kids use their cell phones to cheat, by "texting" or accessing the internet. One boy, she tells me, blatantly leaves his book open during tests. She confronted him, asking how he justified cheating, but he said he only did it at German school, not real school.

Trip tells me that kids in his class cheat "all the time."

At the University of Notre Dame, the president claims to have invited Mr. Obama to give the commencement speech for the sake of "dialogue." Does anyone believe that?

Do liars and cheats really think they are getting away with something? Probably. Why not? If we take a long look at public figures who have been caught cheating and telling lies, people like Biden (plagerism), Kennedy (cheating), Dodd (utter nonsence), Sebelius (pro-choice but anti-abortion--gimme a break), we can see a pattern dishonesty in the public attitude of these politicians. Without examples of honesty from the people who are constantly paraded before us in the news, and without a free press to call them on their lies, what hope is there for the young people who are told in one moment that they ought to be honest, and in the next that there is no absolute truth? In a world where you can be both "anti-abortion and pro-choice" is there ever any reason to to take an moral stand on honesty?

The dishonest have their own apologists out there backing them up: In an outrageous example of the problem of improbity, one blogger points out that Catholic honesty is lacking by pointing to supposed distortions by devout Catholics. This in itself is dishonest, as the author makes excuses for policies endorsed, individuals nominated, and ideas promulgated by the current administration. You see, though the president may have overturned the Mexico City Policy, there are other pieces of legislation in place (Helms Amendment) that prevent (for now) any federal money being used for overseas abortions. Furthermore, Gov. Sebelius' connections to Tiller are not "all that close" so we don't have to worry. And the Dickey-Wicker Amendment is a roadblock (for now) to the president's embryonic stem cell policy, so we should all be honest about what the president is really doing (Nothing! We may all breath easily!) . When devout Catholics shout about the president being pro-abortion, they are being dishonest, according to this blogger; the president must be pro-life, since his anti-life policies are all null, and we pro-lifers should all be more honest.

Yeah, right.

Roker Chooses MBS

Following Al Roker's last choice for his Book Club for Kids, the propaganda piece Change Has Come, I see that the Mysterious Benedict Society is the new group read. I wonder if the young book club members will see the connection between "change" due to the "crisis," and the manufactured "emergency" and control of the media that requires our young heros to turn of the TV and remain clear-headed in MBS.

Probably not.

Lessons from The Mysterious Benedict Society

Again, this is not a political blog. My motto is: "Someone else can say it better." Still, hearing this montage of Obama's overuse of the word "crisis" reminds me of the manufactured "emergency" in The Mysterious Benedict Society. If only a group of child-super-geniuses were available to rescue us from the "crisis" we could all relax.

Sea Kittens? Yum!

What's a sea kitten? It's part of PETA's new anti-fishing campaign aimed at children. Change the language to reflect a more cuddly attitude towards fish, and you'll stop the slaughter. Or something like that. Hey, maybe we ought to call unborn babies "womb-kittens." (H/T TEH Resistance [not a blog for children]) Yeah.

Frankly, a sea kitten sounds like what one might call a young catfish.

I interned at a wildlife refuge right after college. Most of the people I worked with were very nice, but a few were PETA-nutty. One introduced me to her cat "PETA." I told her that I had a dog named "PITA." She told me that her cat's name stood for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I told her that my dog's name stood for Pain in the A... Erm. Yes.

Another refuge worker would only eat eggs if they were laid by her own personal chicken, which ran wild around the property. Fine. Then a rooster was dropped off at the refuge, and she stopped eating the eggs her chicken laid just in case...[wait for it]... they were fertile. And it was not because she was squeamish about the tiny cell cluster on the yolk, but because of a pro-animal life ideal. Seriously.

Then there was the woman who explained to me that she was a vegetarian but her pets were not, so ethically, she had to feed them meat. So it's OK to kill animals if you are going to feed them to other animals, but not if you are going to feed them to humans. Oh, and it's OK to keep animals as pets.

And then there was the rescued fox kit, who was taught to hunt by exposure to (no doubt) terrified store-bought hamsters and gerbils. Purchasing animals for food could be expensive, though, so to keep the refuge going, many food items, especially those big bags of frozen white mice, were donated by research laboratories.

I could go on...in my month-long internship I heard many anecdotes and opinions that would make great stories, though the people who actually ran the place, and most of my fellow interns, were pretty reasonable. But all this talk of sea kittens is making me hungry. And PETA, if you are out there (and you are out there, aren't you?), please know that my kids have asked for "sea kitten and chips" for dinner. Yum. Pass the malt vinegar.

ETA: Another strange version of this story.



Create Your Own Sea Kitten at peta.org!