08:16 – Reading about the Norwegian mass murderer, there’s something I don’t understand. He thinks muslims are invading and taking over Europe, forcibly spreading their hateful beliefs to a previously civilized part of the planet. Okay, I get that. He’s right. If Europe has any sense, it’ll expel muslims with extreme prejudice, as should the US and other civilized countries. Muslims are nothing more than Nazis in drag, and the proper response to a muslim is the same as the proper response to a Nazi.
What I don’t understand is why he set off his truck bomb next to government offices, in an area presumably largely populated by ethnic Norwegians, and then shot up a youth camp presumably largely populated by ethnic Norwegian young people. Why not park the truck next to a mosque during services and then shoot up the survivors? Or, since he apparently had enough ammonium nitrate to make five or six more truck bombs, why didn’t he park truck bombs outside five or six more mosques during services? What was the point to slaughtering a bunch of ethnic Norwegians, most of whom were presumably non-believers, and most of whom presumably weren’t much happier about the spread of islam than he is?
11:34 – I’m always leery when calls of racism are made against ordinary people or institutions, but if this article is correct this is a pretty blatant case. This young woman earned the highest GPA in her graduating class, and yet was denied her position as sole valedictorian. Furthermore, her mother’s appeal to the school authorities was denied on questionable grounds, and delayed until the question became moot. The young woman in question is black and a single mother, and the school district in question is in the Deep South. If the facts stated in this article are correct and complete, it’s reasonable to ask if this young woman was denied her rights simply because the authorities didn’t believe she was the right kind of person to represent her school.
Now, it’s possible that there were extenuating circumstances. For example, the article mentions that she took a heavy load of AP classes, but does not mention which ones. Let’s face it, an A in AP History or AP Literature or AP Foreign Language shouldn’t have the same weight as an A in AP Biology, Chemistry, Physics, or Calculus. Many school districts award 5 points on a 4-point GPA for an A in any AP course, but if an A in one of those non-rigorous AP courses is worth 5 points, then an A in a rigorous AP subject should be worth at least 6. So, although the article doesn’t give details, it’s possible that the students in second and third place had only slightly lower GPAs and had taken a boatload of rigorous AP courses. In that case, they probably deserved the valedictorian and salutatorian positions. Or they would have, had the school district made those changes to the way GPAs were assigned. As it stands, the only justification I can see for their position is that the other students may have had a wider range of extracurricular activities, which in any event should not be given any weight for academic honors. And, of course, as a single mother, the student in question probably had more limited opportunities to engage in such activities.
The reason he murdered 90 people is that quite frankly, he is nuts.
Well, I agree with you on that, but only because he murdered 90 presumably innocent people. Would your position change if he’d killed 90 imams?
Although we’ve only noticed recently, islam has been at war with civilization for more than 1,000 years now. It’s not murder to kill enemy soldiers, particularly those who’ve invaded your country.
The only thing obfuscating the issue is that some wrongly consider islam to be a religion, and many of us in civilized countries for some reason have respect for religion, which it does not deserve and has not earned.
He was attacking the Labour party which he believed to be primarily responsible for the Muslim problem in Norway today. The youth camp where he killed so many young people was a Labour summer camp for the next generation of Labour apparatchiks. He’s certifiably nuts, but there is a logic to it. I’m not surprised when something like this happens. I’m actually surprised it doesn’t happen more often, considering how many lunatics there are in the world and how easy, relatively speaking, it is to carry out a mass murder spree.
Yes, I understood that. And while I have no great love for liberals (by today’s definition) or conservatives, it makes no sense to kill either.
I would say that muslims are primarily (solely) responsible for the muslim problem in Norway, and everywhere else there’s a muslim problem. And, in particular, muslim men are responsible.
My friends invariably point out that they know muslims who are decent people, and I don’t disagree. But those people aren’t real muslims, by my definition or by the muslim definition. In fact, they’re apostates who are subject to death according to islam.
Back in September 2001, I pointed out an easy way to tell the difference. Insist that a suspect eat a ham sandwich and piss on a copy of the koran. If he does those things, he’s no threat. If he refuses, shoot him, because if he gets a chance he’ll sure as hell shoot you.
What is telling to me, is that when this Norwegian committed the atrocity, he was sounded condemned by every other Norwegian. When a Muslim commits a similar atrocity, very few condemn and the rest celebrate his martyrdom.
Back when I graduated, everyone with a GPA above 4.0 was a valedictorian. My class had 26 valedictorians out of 696 students. The top valedictorian gave the valedictory address. I was 13 of 26 due to a B in typing and a full courseload. We only got bonus GPA points for two AP classes per semester – 4.2 for A, 3.15 for B. I tool the max of 4 per semester – science, math, english, social studies – along with Spanish for one year and other electives for the other two years. (It was a 3 year high school at the time.)
Some of the students in my daughter’s high school went through all kinds of machinations to have a max GPA. They took exactly the minimum number of classes needed to graduate. They took all their non-AP classes via correspondence course – they got graduation credit, but the grade was not factored into their GPA. One student competed in dressage and got that counted for the one required semester of gym. Another joined a bowling league.
What is telling to me, is that when this Norwegian committed the atrocity, he was sounded condemned by every other Norwegian. When a Muslim commits a similar atrocity, very few condemn and the rest celebrate his martyrdom.
Yep. Sometimes I wonder just what happened to change the US to a nation of wimpish morons. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, everyone knew who the enemy was. When the muslims took down the twin towers, everyone also knew who the real enemy was, but no one was allowed to say it.
Accusations of racism over Manzanar are ridiculous. The authorities rounded up Japanese because it was the Japanese who attacked us. German citizens were interned, and even American citizens with German accents were closely watched, both by the authorities and by their neighbors. If it had been the Germans that bombed Pearl Harbor, you can be sure that they’d have been rounded up and put in Manzanar or a similar camp. So why haven’t we rounded up muslims?
Fast-forward 60 years, and we allow muslims, including foreign nationals, to roam freely within our borders. I commented many years ago that I believed Political Correctness was the profound evil of the century, and I see no reason to change that opinion. We’re not allowed to shoot them. We’re not allowed to imprison them. We’re not allowed to profile them. Hell, we’re not even allowed to hurt their feelings. Meanwhile, they’re out to kill and enslave us and destroy civilization.
I think we should pass out guns to every US muslim woman and tell them that if they shoot their husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers, or indeed any other muslim men, we’ll rule it justifiable homicide.
Some of the students in my daughter’s high school went through all kinds of machinations to have a max GPA. They took exactly the minimum number of classes needed to graduate. They took all their non-AP classes via correspondence course – they got graduation credit, but the grade was not factored into their GPA. One student competed in dressage and got that counted for the one required semester of gym. Another joined a bowling league.
That’s obviously ridiculous. If the SAT still meant something, the easiest and fairest way to award the valedictorian and salutatorian slots would be to use their SAT scores, with GPA as a tie-breaker if necessary. Of course, nowadays the SATs have been dumbed down into worthlessness.
I graduated in the bottom 10% of my graduating class. I got out of high school, went in the USAF, got out of the military, then went to college. I work side-by-side with the people that graduated in the top 10% of my graduating class. So, as for high school GPA… piss on it. It’s worthless.
I don’t remember where I ranked in my high school graduating class. I don’t think I was paying any attention. In fact, I don’t remember showing up for graduation. But I’m pretty sure I graduated, or my parents would have said something.
That’s obviously ridiculous.
It gets worse. There are consultants that will help families plan all this out.
The high school she went to for two years where this took place was a very highly rated school – one of the “best” public high schools in various rankings (ususally based on per capita AP/IB tests passed or the like). One of the reasons for the pressure is that in Texas, you are automatically admitted to UT Austin or Texas A&M if you are in the top 10% of your high school class. It also has led to kids from her high school transferring to a nearby high school for their last semester in order to boost class rank. That school has very few kids in AP classes, so a GPA just outside the top 10% at the competitive school would put you in the running for valedictorian.
Oh, and the AP teachers were useless and never informed us about the academic problems our daughter developed her sophmore year until she crashed and burned. (She had an undiagnosed panic disorder.) Then the year after she would have graduated, they had a gang-related fatal stabbing in a stairwell. The gang problem had been building for years, with turf struggles and skirmishing over control over the hallways – my daughter couldn’t visit her locker at lunch because it was in a hall controlled by a gang.
You mean it wasn’t?
I dropped out and went to college because I was bored and high school had nothing to offer me, and the princi”pal” wouldn’t let me go early admi in lieu of senior year. Interestingly, my drop-out papers apparently got lost and I ended up graduating after a year of early admit; one can only assume that the lovely, lovely state aid money, keyed to attendance, had something to do with that.
Congratulations on being the first to comment on my obscure pop culture reference.
I was fortunate enough to attend a high school that was extraordinary academically and that furthermore pretty much left me on my own to do whatever I wanted to do. Access to real lab facilities and chemicals I couldn’t afford to buy myself was particularly helpful.
I’ll always be grateful to my advanced chemistry teacher, Angelo Perotta, who handed me a stack of college organic and physical chemistry books and told me to have at it. We actually didn’t have a class, since I was the only one doing second- and third-year chemistry, but he’d wander in and out periodically to ask what I was up to. My response was typically something like “doing an aldol condensation”, to which he’d reply, “Okay. Have fun. Let me know what you learn” and then leave. The best part was that when I needed a particular chemical or piece of apparatus, he’d order it for me.
I think your teacher gets a mention here:
http://patlitowitz.blogspot.com/2008/01/dedication-new-castle-high-grads-make.html
I didn’t see a reference in the article to the valedictorian candidate being a single mother, but then I only skimmed it. I’m also not convinced that “rigorous” subjects should be given a special weighting. I think “rigorous” courses are easier, like most nerds I’d probably get a better result for physics than English lit.