Luann Franklin, writing for the Northwest Indiana Times, has an article entitled “Property Tax Caps Devastating to Indiana Municipalities.” The story reports on the comments of the head of the Indiana Association of Cities and Towns, Matthew Greller.

Greller says that “tighten your belt” is easy to say, but with so much of a city’s budget being public safety and things like roads, there isn’t a lot to cut without backing your city into 19th or early 20th century levels of service. (To some, a return to the 19th century is undoubtedly a feature, not a bug.) The General Assembly has also apparently been taking a “state government small enough to fit in city hall” approach:

Greller said the Indiana General Assembly and the state government agencies also are negatively affecting local governments.
Of the 900 bills introduced during this legislative session, more than half “have some impact on local government,” he said. “The Indiana legislature is taking a very onerous, micromanagement approach. That will have to stop.”

State agencies have encroached on “home rule,” limiting or taking over the powers of local governments, Greller said. In addition, state government has to certify municipal budgets, but never does so on time, he said.

Greller was also not amused by the recent revelation that the State had mistakenly retained $200 million that belonged to local government.

“So, kids must have a tougher time learning about analog clocks these days than when you first got started,” says I to my child’s seasoned teacher.

“Oh yes,” says she. “It’s a shame. They can tell you the numbers on a digital clock; but that’s not *really* telling time.” (Or words to that effect – I don’t have a transcript to go back to.)

“Surely you can’t use this brief exchange to endorse the reactionary school reform crusaders,” says the reader; accustomed to a comfortable left-center orthodoxy in these pages. Maybe I could, but I won’t. And stop calling me “Shirley.”

I find myself in a bit of a quandary that probably isn’t that unusual. I find that there are ways in which I think (in my fairly uninformed kind of way) that my kids’ education could be better. Extrapolating, there are probably ways in which our community and our state could make the entire system better. I look around and see that there are blocs advocating for “reform” and blocs advocating, in effect – if not explicitly, for “status quo.” Trouble is, the reformers seem to be sanguine about the prospect of losing the baby, so long as we can get rid of that damnable bathwater. I suspect their cures will be worse than the disease. Lack of trust and a common vision with the reformers tend to make me default to the status quo.

But what was this about clocks? The exchange seemed a nice little metaphor for teachers who are just marking time (clever, huh?) until they hit retirement. Because it’s so convenient, I’m just going to pin a lot of assumptions and projections on this teacher so I can tell a little story that illustrates a minor point. The real-life teacher may not actually bear a great deal of resemblance to the allegorical teacher I need for purposes of this blog post.

In any case, it’s not a shame that kids have less exposure to analog clocks than they used to outside of school. It’s a morally neutral change in circumstances. There are simply fewer analog clocks “in the wild” than there are in the workbook pages of the average elementary school. If you are still an engaged teacher, you either compensate by working harder to teach the kids to read such clocks or you place less emphasis on it, because in the scheme of things, who the hell cares? When are kids going to be more than 20 feet from a digital clock these days? It’s not *really* telling time when you read it on a digital clock versus an analog clock? I know it’s only first grade, but time is such a deeply fascinating subject, I can’t fathom anything more than a passing shoulder shrug about the particulars of a clock display.

And, if you’re not spending time giving the kids the outlines of time being variable at relativistic speeds (my kids get enough of that kind of thing from Dad), then move on to teaching kids how to deal with the new realities, challenges, and opportunities kids are seeing in the wild now where once they saw analog clocks. All I’m really advocating (and it’s a huge thing – easier said than done) are teaching styles that adapt methods to the world’s changing circumstances. Some teachers, I’m afraid, are more likely to begrudge the fact that kids don’t succeed as readily to old methods.

That said, I’m hesitant to make too much of a stink about this sort of thing because I fear my desire to keep teachers motivated to adapt with the times can be co-opted by the “reformers” to eviscerate the employment rights of the old timers because they’ll happily dump experience if it means that management can get more power and can hire younger teachers primarily because they’ll work cheaper. It won’t matter too much how smart my kids are if they live in a society with no functioning middle class. I assume Somalians are born with as much innate intelligence as anywhere else; but individual potential just doesn’t mean that much when matched against massive structural imbalances.

Just reading Maureen Hayden’s “Story’s Not Over for Indiana’s Bookkeepers” about the half-billion dollars the Daniels’ administration failed to properly account for. It talks about this being a particularly rough item for Gov. Daniels’ to deal with on account of his reputation as a penny-pincher (Iraq War era tenure at the Office of Management & Budget notwithstanding, apparently.)

Apparently the laser focus is only on the spending side of the ledger; the income side of the ledger gets a little fuzzy.

Steven Vaughan-Nichols has an article entitled “Before the Internet: The Golden Age of Online Services.” It’s a little stroll down memory lane for folks who were connecting online before the web; mainly reviewing the major online services like AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve. The world was at your fingertips if you had a 300 baud modem and many dollars per hour.

I was a teen and in college during those days and so didn’t have the money, or really, the need for those services. Although, the lack of a broadly available Internet was a significant cause of one of the formative events in my life. I’ve told the story before of my misspent youth:

Today, I’ll go with the Internet. It’s really hard to remember how I did things before it came along. This is a tool that I was, perhaps, waiting for more eagerly than most. When I was 14, I got arrested for a crime the Internet has rendered obsolete. I was stealing phone calls from a local long distance company called Saverline. It worked like MCI or Sprint (like they did at the time, anyway). If you were a customer, you dialed their switchboard number, dialed your long distance number, and then (here is the crack security) dialed your *four* digit code. I (and a number of my fellow Commodore 64 users) would keep dialing until we got a working four digit code. I’d use the number to call long distance to connect to a Bulletin Board System in other cities. I really enjoyed the discussion boards on those systems, but we also used the systems to download games (“warez”). I was also the sort of kid who was likely to pore over encyclopedias and the like when I got my hands on them.

The State has apparently found another accounting error to the tune of about $200 million to supplement the $300 million mistake discovered in December. The error discovered in December had been shortchanging the state’s general fund. The more recent error has to do with counties option income taxes and economic development income taxes. 

The State Board of Accounts has made county specific numbers available here. Looks like the distribution to my home county of Tippecanoe was about $5 million light for 2011 and 2012.

Came across a quote from Greg Graffin, singer for the band Bad Religion that I liked quite a bit, particularly the bolded part:

Wired Magazine came out with a big exposé of “the new atheists”. I was interviewed for it—and yet I think I was included as a sidebar but not as a main feature and I think the main reason they did that was because they noticed that I wasn’t that happy billing myself as an atheist. To me it just doesn’t say that much; it doesn’t say much about you. Instead I bill myself as a naturalist, which I think says a lot more. Because a naturalist is someone who… first of all—they study natural science, and they have a hopeful message—I think—to send to the world, which is… we can agree on what the truth is… and it has to be through experimentation, verification, and new discoveries, followed by more verification. So… if we can agree on those terms, we can agree that the truth changes, based on new discoveries, and the structure of science is such that you can never be so sure of something, because a new discovery can rework the framework—it can reconstruct the framework of your science and you have to look at the world differently. That makes it a very dynamic and exciting place to be. And if you say “you’re an atheist”, it’s not really saying much about how you came to that conclusion. But if you say “you’re a naturalist”, I think it says something. You’ve reached that point because you’ve studied science, because you believe there’s a fundamental way of looking at the world that is part of a long tradition. And so, I prefer naturalist.

That quote led me over to the Wired Magazine article from 2006. The author interviews Richard Dawkins whose aggressive atheism is well known. The author suggests that there is a move afoot to get religious fence-sitters off the fence. I guess I’m off the fence as to whether I’m a theist or not. I’m not. I am on the fence in the meta-debate. How should non-theists be engaging theists? My strong inclination is to live and let live. Mom taught me to be polite.

On the other hand, I look at the progress of the gay equality movement, and I think they have made a lot of ground because of those gay people who were unapologetic and even assertive about who they are. The best defense is often a good offense. Atheists are probably in a better position socially if the debate isn’t centered on whether they are immoral, devil-loving corrupters of the nation’s youth. (“Atheism: Threat or Menace?”) Rather, they are in a better position, if the debate centers on what makes Catholicism or Mormonism superior to Odinism, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the Church of the SubGenius, or any of the thousands of other beliefs that can’t be disproved by science but which are no longer or never were taken seriously.

There is always going to be a bit of incivility associated with attempts to change the status quo. Incivility is probably even more likely when discussing atheism versus theism because, unlike sexual orientation, race, and gender; religion or its lack is a choice. It’s easier to build a consensus that there is no “fault” attached to one’s race, gender, or even sexual orientation. (Though, with the latter, there are still some who claim being gay (and, by extension, I guess heterosexual) is a “lifestyle choice.”)

With religion, whichever way you land, if you embrace a different view you’re essentially saying “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Whatever its other problems, agnosticism avoids that implicit (sometimes explicit) criticism of others.

But, like I said, I do like Graffin’s focusing on celebrating natural philosophy rather than worrying too much about negating religious belief. The shift in human thinking represented by the scientific method and the way in which it fundamentally altered the human experience, I think, is difficult to overstate. The scientific method doesn’t allow us to identify every True thing, but it does allow us some common measure of confidence in the Truths that it does help us identify.

Sophia Voravong has a good article on Judge Warren Thompson who passed away at age 90 this past Saturday. He was the judge of Tippecanoe Circuit Court from 1961 to 1984. I only had the opportunity to directly interact with Judge Thompson as a senior judge; doing routine tasks at motion hour and whatnot.

The article notes that members of the legal community and even prisoners he sentenced described him as gentle, kind, and never having a bad day. He was also funny. At the memorial service for Fred Hoffman, the founding partner of my firm, he had the room laughing at a story about Fred; something about a chair breaking if memory serves. I just remember that his delivery and timing were perfect.

Rest in peace, Judge.

The Trayvon Martin story has received so much attention it’s probably beyond my abilities to offer anything directly. For those in an isolation booth or something, it’s the story out of Florida where a black kid returning home in his neighborhood after getting some Skittles was followed by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman named Zimmerman. Zimmerman called 911, was told not to keep following the kid, did anyway, and ended up killing the kid. There appears to be some uncertainty as to just what happened in the very final moments. In my own mind, it would take a fairly startling turn of events to make Zimmerman’s shooting an act of self-defense given he chose to keep following Martin, despite instructions not to, and put himself in whatever situation that followed, causing him to shoot.

So, there, despite myself saying I had nothing to add, I went ahead and offered some redundancy anyway. But, what prompted me to write was this entry by Angry Black Lady at Balloon Juice. She is hitting back at Dan Riehl over his apparent efforts at Breitbart to make Martin seem more dangerous – through details that would be irrelevant to Zimmerman’s interaction with him – than he has generally been portrayed in most places.

The dynamics of partisan fighting are mysterious to me and a little fascinating. It’s fairly clear that a lot of events aren’t reasons for the partisan fighting, just another battle ground – just another place to have the fight. Why do the armies choose to engage in particular places? In this case, I can see why the Forces of the Left would be interested – you have a minority whose life is apparently being undervalued by The Man coupled with what appears to be the irresponsible use of a firearm. You’d think the Forces of the Right might want to let this one pass. (And, maybe many of them are — these groupings are not monoliths.)

If you let him burn, Zimmerman can just be a lone nut – nothing wrong with the system, nothing wrong with the stand your ground concept when properly applied. If you embrace Zimmerman, however, you have to contend with the argument that stand your ground includes chasing after a guy, purposely putting yourself in harm’s way before standing your ground. Making it worse, in this case, is that so far the only reason Zimmerman put himself and Martin in harm’s way seems to be the argument that Martin was black and we all know how >they are. Especially – according to Fox News’s Jerry Rivers a/k/a Geraldo Rivera – when they are wearing hoodies. (“I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.”) Practically begging to be murdered.

So, we have voices from Fox News and Breitbart declaring for Zimmerman’s side of things. I wonder if there is much thought behind that declaration or if it’s almost reflexive. “The Left is all worked up over this. They’re being silly, of course. I just have to figure out and point out why.”

Despite being a nation of individuals, I think it’s fairly clear we feel safer traveling in packs; both metaphorically and increasingly – with ‘watchmen’ like Zimmerman on self-declared duty – literally.

Good post by Fred Clark at the Slacktivist entitled Mischief follows in partisan Bible translations.

He takes a look at Exodus 21:22-25. Here is the passage from the New American Standard Bible’s 1977 revision:

And if men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she has a miscarriage, yet there is not further injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him; and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

He notes the lesser penalty for miscarriage (a fine) than for injury to the woman herself. But then, Clark highlights the 1995 version:

If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise.

The translators have changed “miscarriage” to “premature birth.” He looks at about 15 earlier translations and they’re pretty clear that the fine is imposed when the child dies. The change to a baby that’s not necessarily dead for this passage happens in the 70s and after. Explaining the change, Clark suggests:

But something changed between 1977 and 1995 — something that had nothing to do with scholarship, language, accuracy, fidelity or readability.

American politics had changed between 1977 and 1995. It had polarized and radicalized millions of American Protestants, rallying them around a single issue and thus, as intended, rallying them behind a single political party.

In 1977, the sort of American Protestants who purchased most Bibles couldn’t be summed up in a single word. But by 1995, they could be: “abortion.”

And for anti-abortion American evangelicals, Exodus 21:12-27 was unacceptable. It suggested that striking and killing an unborn fetus was in a separate category from striking and killing a “person.” Strike and kill a free person, you get the death penalty. Strike and kill an unborn fetus, you get a fine.

I flatter myself as having a fairly good knack for empathy, the ability to emotionally identify with others. That’s not to say I’m necessarily motivated to act on that understanding. My tendency toward sympathy is more limited. However, I’ve notice that, in matters of faith, my capacity for empathy is diminishing (that doesn’t mean my sympathy toward believers is necessarily moving one way or another). I just have a hard time getting into a believer’s head and seeing the subject of religion and God from their perspective. For my part, the supernatural beliefs of humanity over the millenia have been so varied and at odds, I don’t grok the mind that is so certain any of them are right – let alone one of them in particular – that one ought to conform their life’s behavior to that belief.

Ed Brayton has a blog post entitled Scholars Study Secularism. Apparently, there may be cognitive differences between the minds of believers and unbelievers.

Boston University’s Catherine Caldwell-Harris is researching the differences between the secular and religious minds. “Humans have two cognitive styles,” the psychologist says. “One type finds deeper meaning in everything; even bad weather can be framed as fate. The other type is neurologically predisposed to be skeptical, and they don’t put much weight in beliefs and agency detection.”

Caldwell-Harris is currently testing her hypothesis through simple experiments. Test subjects watch a film in which triangles move about. One group experiences the film as a humanized drama, in which the larger triangles are attacking the smaller ones. The other group describes the scene mechanically, simply stating the manner in which the geometric shapes are moving. Those who do not anthropomorphize the triangles, she suspects, are unlikely to ascribe much importance to beliefs. “There have always been two cognitive comfort zones,” she says, “but skeptics used to keep quiet in order to stay out of trouble.”

That last bit about keeping quiet struck me as an interesting line. I think the cultural status quo remains in place by socially isolating views outside of the mainstream. The weakness of those non-conforming views is probably out of proportion to its actual prevalence. The Internet is probably changing that; where holders of even the most marginal viewpoints can find a like minded community. Anyway, defined broadly enough, nonbelievers appear to be a non-trivial segment of the population:

But the most significant target of Kosmin’s research is the consumer group most likely to shy away from such commercial products: secularists. “The non-religious, or Nones, hold the fastest-growing world view in the market,” says Kosmin. “In the past 20 years, their numbers in the United States have doubled to 15 percent.”

. . .
This umbrella [of non-believers] covers various groups including atheists, agnostics and humanists, as well as those who are simply indifferent to religion.

Secularists make up some 15 percent of the global population, or about 1 billion people. As a group, this puts them third in size behind Christians (2.3 billion) and Muslims (1.6 billion).

One of the fun parts, they tend to know more about the God they don’t believe in than believers. “Even when the higher education levels of the unreligious were factored out, they proved to be better informed in matters of faith, followed by Jewish and Mormon believers.”

This kind of thing will do nothing to rest the minds of those who feel like the country is going to hell because of our decadent culture.