Christians and ISIS in Iraq: France offers Asylum

Christen und Islamischer Staat im Irak: Frankreich bietet Asyl an - SPIEGEL ONLINE

The story is only on the German side of Der Spiegel at the moment. I applaud the government of France!

Christen und Islamischer Staat im Irak: Frankreich bietet Asyl an – SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Quick translation:

It was an Exodus in fear of death: Thousands of Christians had to leave the northern Iraqi city of Mosul a few days ago because they were threated by the terrorist group ISIS. Now France is offering the refugees asylum. “One must help every person who fled to Kurdistan because of the threats of ISIS,” reads a joint declaration from the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve on Monday in Paris. “We are prepared to give them asylum in our country, if they wish.”

Proud of the French.

Listening and waiting for the joint Declaration by John Kerry and Jeh Johnson.

[crickets]

You can’t trust your copier – German professor discovers that Xerox machines have been altering numbers on copies – perhaps for years!

This one still has me shaking my head in disbelief, but I’ve verified it.

The news is coming out of Germany and hasn’t broken big in the English speaking world yet, but it will.

Trust me on this – this is going to be a BIG story very soon.

Der Spiegel (the German equivalent of Time magazine) came out with the story today, but the real hero is German professor, D. Kriesel, at the University of Bonn. The story at Der Spiegel has not yet appeared in English. But, even better, here’s a link to the professor’s story (and blog) (in English) where I suspect things will be quickly developing.

To summarize, the good professor was working on some building plans which needed to be copied. He used a standard Xerox WorkCentre 7535 copier and suddenly noticed that some small numbers, placed in the center of each room giving the size of the room in square meters had been altered by the copier. Not just blurred, altered – swapped. A room which the original plans showed as 21.11 m2, showed up on the copy as 14.13 m2.

Again, the importance of this observation – The numbers were not just blurred, they were altered – swapped in fact for numbers taken elsewhere on the document.

Compare the images below:

-Original Building Plans- ——Xerox Copy——

Original Building Plans
Original Building Plans

Xerox copy
Xerox copy

 

Professor Kriesel has been able to reproduce the phenomenon on a number of documents and a number of copiers. Numbers set in small type, especially 7 points or less, seems most susceptible to being altered. The numbers are still quite readable by the human eye, and they are clearly altered.

Why is this happening?

Professor Kriesel’s hypothesis, which is being confirmed by lots of technical analysis, is that the Xerox copier is using an image compression algorithm that replaces tiles in the original with “similar”tiles found elsewhere in the document.

Professor Kriesel contacted Xerox, which at first seems to have dismissed his allegations as a joke.

They’re not laughing anymore as lots of other Xerox copier owners have been able to reproduce the behavior.

The implications are staggering.

What about document centers which have used Xerox copiers to produce digital images and then destroyed originals?

What implications are there for financial records? engineering documents? medical records?
How long has this behavior been going on? (hint: It has likely been happening undetected for years.)

Hacker News appears to have some of the liveliest early analysis.

Stay tuned – there will be lots more on this story over the coming weeks – a prediction by RedHatRob!

Gay Marriage Goes National, Act 1

marriage game overDOMA was doomed from the start, as many (including the Red Hat) pointed out when it was passed back in the 1990s, and signed into law by President Clinton. He probably knew at the time that it was doomed as well, and cynically signed it anyway.

A federal judge in Ohio today ordered state officials to recognize the marriage of two men that was performed in Maryland. This, in spite of the fact that the constitution of the state of Ohio forbids the recognition of any marriage other than that between “one man and one woman.” Such a ruling was inevitable. And, though it may be appealed, it is inevitable that it will be upheld by the federal courts.

In these matters, it helps to have some acquaintance with the text of the Constitution. In this case, specifically, the “full faith and credit clause,” found in Article IV, Section 1. Recall that Articles 1, 2, &3 outline the functions and powers of the 3 branches (Legislative, Executive, Judicial). Article 4 defines relations between the states.

The “full faith and credit” clause is a fundamental principle of US law. It explains why, when certain states adopted no-fault, no-waiting, divorce statutes in the 1960s, it spelled the end of any legal discouragement of divorce. A divorce granted in Reno must be accepted as a binding official act by the state of California (or any other state), because of the “full faith and credit” clause.

In the same way, once any one of the 50 states began to recognize homosexual marriages, it became inevitable that they would have to be recognized in the other 49 states as well.

The state of Ohio adopted an amendment to the state constitution in 2004 defining marriage as “one man and one woman.” It was ratified by a vote of 61.7% to 38.3%. That will not matter.

Tennessee adopted a state constitutional amendment in 2006 defining marriage as “one man and one woman.” The amendment was approved by 81.25% of the voters. That will not matter.

Both states will be forced by the federal judiciary to recognize homosexual marriages.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how states with such diametrically opposed views on key matters of public policy will remain peacefully in union with each other.

God help us.

Hat Tip: Stand Firm | Gay Marriage Goes National, Act 1.

The Common Breakfast Scheme
– an Improbable Fantasy

Suppose that the federal government decided to over-reach and do something illogical about the national epidemic of childhood obesity. Bear with me while I set up the scenario.

Because it’s “for the children,” the Department of Health announces a sweeping program to require a national, standardized breakfast menu. Frosted flakes, cocoa puffs, and honey nuts are all out. All children, under the age of 18 will be required to have a nutritious breakfast using only items from a federally mandated and approved list of foods. Muesli & granola are in. Fruit and yogurt are in. Everything else, not so much. And suppose further that the federal bureaucracy came up with some obnoxious and intrusive schemes to monitor and verify what all of our [ahem, excuse me, THEIR] little darlings were eating for breakfast.

There would of course, be a predictable outrage from parents (and probably teen-agers, if not toddlers). The federal government would be denounced for taking liberties with the constitution. There would be rallies denouncing the Common Breakfast Scheme. The idea of enlarging the federal government and allowing its intrusion into suburban kitchens would be anathema.

Of course, there would be those who saw opportunities. Some of the major breakfast cereal manufacturers might rush to re-design their cereals and packaging to announce that they were Common Breakfast compliant. Some big corporations might even see great advantage in having their products endorsed and approved, while their rivals’ products were banned. Big Breakfast Corporations might even publicly support the Common Breakfast Scheme.

But ponder, for just a moment, the small local family run business who makes homemade granola. They’ve been careful with their ingredients. They have a loyal customer base. And they certainly have nothing to do with any big government initiative that wants to compel everyone to eat granola.

And suddenly, they find themselves denounced as either “supporting”, “accidentally aligned”, or “coincidentally aligned” with the Common Breakfast Scheme. Citizen activists from The Breakfast Freedom Coalition (which sprang up out of nowhere), take it upon themselves to compile lists of any and all companies who produce any product which is listed as approved by the Common Breakfast Scheme. Websites are started, activists are dispatched urging consumers to demand information about the local granola companies stance towards the Common Breakfast.

And through a network of self-appointed experts, small companies are told that their products are going to be boycotted because they are Common Breakfast Aligned. Indeed, at least one of the activists writes and publishes an opinion piece denouncing them as the equivalent of Tories during the American Revolution!

And all they really wanted to do was to continue making and selling the same homemade granola that they’d been making and selling for twenty years. They wanted nothing to do with the Common Breakfast list of approved foods. They certainly didn’t support a federal mandate telling people what they could and couldn’t feed to their children for breakfast.

Math problem #1: How much time, energy, and goodwill would have been wasted by The Breakfast Freedom Coalition, tracking down all of the local granola companies in order to publicize which ones were making Common Breakfast aligned food before they came to their senses?

Math problem #2: How much impact would The Breakfast Freedom Coalition have on the implementation of the federal government’s Common Breakfast Scheme by targeting small granola companies?

But of course, this is simply a highly improbable thought experiment.

The federal government would never consider a scheme so poorly conceived and so universally intrusive (and so unconstitutional).

And there really aren’t any citizen activists so benighted as to think that the way to oppose the federal government would be to go after small homemade granola companies.

Are there?

The Problem with the Common Core Standards (and what NOT to do about it)

Horace Mann - Daguerreotype by Southworth & Hawes, c1850.jpg
Horace Mann

What is happening in American public education right now is alarming.

That being said, the crisis/problems in public education did not suddenly develop with the introduction of the Common Core Standards. At a basic philosophical level, the problem stems from a failure to realize that education is the responsibility of parents – it is a part of the responsibility we have to raise our children and assist them in growing up to be godly men and women. Parents can (and do) delegate some of the tasks involved, but the overall responsibility & supervision remains theirs.

In this country, about 150 years ago, the intellectual elite decided that most parents were too stupid to be trusted to raise their children. This was a shaking of the foundations. From Horace Mann to John Dewey to Ellwood Cubberley the focus has been to have the state and schools assume responsibility for the raising of children. This is the fundamental cause of the conflict between educational bureaucrats and homeschoolers. They do NOT see education as a matter of parental choice. They believe they, and only they, have the competence and authority to decide what is best for children – all children, including YOUR children.

Common Core has to be evaluated at multiple levels. The problem is NOT that any particular granular skill defined in the Common Core is wrong, or offensive. I have yet to find one, and I’ve asked repeatedly for someone to point out to me what part of the Standards themselves is offensive. At the granular, individual standard level, the only thing wrong with the Common Core standards is that they are incomplete and set the bar too low.

The problem is the bureaucratic superstructure which is using the Common Core Standards to assert and reclaim control over the education of all children. Homeschoolers have been resisting this for 40 years. We must continue to do so. But we must recognize that it’s not our methods or books that cause concern. Our existence is what offends them. They don’t want us to just comply with tests & texts, they want us to return control of the children to them.

A huge consequence of thinking about Common Core along these lines is to recognize that there is NOTHING wrong with teaching the individual standards or using the texts that do. I repeat, their only problem at the base level is that they are incomplete and set the bar too low. So, have no fear of using a book that is Common Core. Letting your child read an Usborne book will not result in their growing up to be homeless on the streets of Seattle.

Homeschool publishers and Usborne books are NOT part of the problem, even if they align with every one of the Common Core Standards, which I dare say almost all of them do. In fact, the good ones meet them and exceed them!

The problem is the long chess match between parents and the educrats over who will control the children.

Who does God entrust children to?

And who has responsibility for their education?

Those are the fundamental questions.

Common Core is a fad. Pay attention to the long game, the chess match.

PLEASE, PLEASE, stop branding, tagging, homeschool publishers with the Scarlet “A” because they use Common Core Aligned books.

If we are to resist the onslaught of the educational establishment and their attempts to reclaim authority and control over the education of all children, we’re going to NEED homeschool publishers.

Every.Single.One.of.Them.

– Rob Shearer
Director, Francis Schaeffer Study Center
Publisher, Greenleaf Press
Homeschooling Dad

The Director's Blog – Rob Shearer, Francis Schaeffer Study Center, Mt. Juliet, TN