How’s Come?
April 30, 2005
How’s come the Democrats were so concerned that “every vote count” in the presidential election, but when it comes to approving judges that reach the floor of the Senate, the last thing they want is to count every vote? How’s come?
Child Abuse By Any Other Name…
April 30, 2005
is still child abuse.
Tip of the Cavs hat to Commonwealth Conservative, who certainly should appreciate it more than most, for a link to an article that is, well, read it for yourself and then describe whether you agree that it is just scary as all get-out:
Can we count this as example #3,493,848 of “The Disintegration of American Culture”?
How Smart Do You Have to be to Get this Blog?
April 29, 2005
Direct from Juicystudio.com, your guide to the readability of this website:
Readability Results for byron-harvey.com
Conclusions based upon the evidence presented below:
1. If you can handle a typical novel or Time magazine, you can handle this website.
2. If you haven’t finished half of tenth grade, you probably can’t handle it, according to the Gunning Fog Index.
3. According to the Flesch Reading Ease scale, this website’s readability is on the extreme readable end of ideal. Good.
4. According to the Flesch-Kincaid grade, you don’t have to be far into 7th grade to get it.
5. Gunning and Flesch and Kincaid need to have lunch and hammer out their stuff. 
Total sentences 566
Total words 6,242
Average words per Sentence 11.03
Words with 1 Syllable 4,240
Words with 2 Syllables 1,226
Words with 3 Syllables 522
Words with 4 or more Syllables 254
Percentage of word with three or more syllables 12.43%
Average Syllables per Word 1.49
Gunning Fog Index 9.38
Flesch Reading Ease 69.95
Flesch-Kincaid Grade 6.24
Interpreting the Results
Philip Chalmers of Benefit from IT provided the following typical Fog Index scores, to help ascertain the readability of documents.
Typical Fog Index Scores
6 TV guides, The Bible, Mark Twain
8 Reader’s Digest
8 – 10 Most popular novels
10 Time, Newsweek
11 Wall Street Journal
14 The Times, The Guardian
15 – 20 Academic papers
Over 20 Only government sites can get away with this, because you can’t ignore them.
Over 30 The government is covering something up
Gunning-Fog Index
The following is the algorithm to determine the Gunning-Fog index.
* Calculate the average number of words you use per sentence.
* Calculate the percentage of difficult words in the sample (words with three or more syllables).
* Add the totals together, and multiply the sum by 0.4.
* Algorithm: (average_words_sentence + number_words_three_syllables_plus) * 0.4
The result is your Gunning-Fog index, which is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. The lower the number, the more understandable the content will be to your visitors. Results over seventeen are reported as seventeen, where seventeen is considered post-graduate level.
Flesch Reading Ease
The following is the algorithm to determine the Flesch Reading Ease.
* Calculate the average number of words you use per sentence.
* Calculate the average number of syllables per word.
* Multiply the average number of syllables per word multiplied by 84.6 and subtract it from the average number of words multiplied by 1.015.
* Subtract the result from 206.835.
* Algorithm: 206.835 – (1.015 * average_words_sentence) – (84.6 * average_syllables_word)
The result is an index number that rates the text on a 100-point scale. The higher the score, the easier it is to understand the document. Authors are encouraged to aim for a score of approximately 60 to 70.
Flesch-Kincaid grade level
The following is the algorithm to determine the Flesch-Kincaid grade level.
* Calculate the average number of words you use per sentence.
* Calculate the average number of syllables per word.
* Multiply the average number of words by 0.39 and add it to the average number of syllables per word multiplied by 11.8.
* Subtract 15.50 from the result.
* Algorithm: (0.39 * average_words_sentence) + (11.8 * average_syllables_word) – 15.9
The result is the Flesch-Kincaid grade level. Like the Gunning-Fog index, it is a rough measure of how many years of schooling it would take someone to understand the content. Negative results are reported as zero, and numbers over twelve are reported as twelve.
Methodists Waver on What the Meaning of “Is” Is…
April 29, 2005
Or something similar to that:
Appeals committee reverses church trial verdict in Stroud case
I really don’t mean to be unkind, but did you catch this statement?
“It is the judgment of the committee that Judicial Council Decision No. 702, which binds this committee, makes it legal error to try, convict and deprive a member in full connection of her right to an appointment pursuant to Paragraphs 304.3 and 2702.1(b) of the Book of Discipline, when, as in this case, neither the General Conference nor the pertinent annual conference has defined the words, ‘practicing homosexual’ and ‘status.’”
The Appeals Committee needs clarification on what the term “practicing homosexual” means. Fill in your own punchline here: ________________________________________________________
To her credit, and I mean this sincerely, Ms. Stroud will not serve in a role of ordained ministry until her case is decided. That’s all I’ll give her, but credit where it’s due. And, the Committee suggests that there seems to be enough evidence to defrock her, if the legal folks can just get their legalities in order.
But for goodness’ sake, isn’t this just plain silly? I understand that due process has its place, but do our good Methodist friends understand how silly this is making them look?
It’s Getting Bad at Sojourners…
April 29, 2005
when the “Quote of the Week” from their weekly Sojourners webmailing is from Molly Ivins:
“It’s a joke that the Right wing claims it is against ‘judicial activists.’ What they want are judicial activists who agree with them.”
- Molly Ivins, syndicated columnist.
Two thoughts: one, I will admit that one could say that Molly Ivins knows a joke when she sees one, since that is what her weekly columns amount to. Two, her typical liberal blather makes a nice insinuation, but the proof would be…???
I want more justices who interpret the law (like Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas), and not judicial activists who make it.
When friends try to suggest that Sojourners is somewhere in the “political middle”, it’s pretty difficult to sustain that argument when this is the kind of quote they headline with—understanding the underlying political philosophy that would prompt this decision…
UPDATE: Should have read further before I posted!!! Here’s a little bit more evidence of where Sojo is coming from—as they quote a dude from Mother Jones as a headline piece, including his line about where George W. Bush stands…
Left, right, and wrong
by Garret Keizer for Mother Jones
People go to church for all kinds of reasons, but the main reason that people of a certain age will start going to church is that their kids are starting to overdose on the dominant culture. They go to church hoping to find solid ground. Sometimes they go to the polls hoping for the same thing.
“You know where I stand,” George W. Bush said any number of times before his 2004 electoral victory, and I certainly did: on the wrong side of every issue. But did voters know where the Democratic Party stood or, more to the point, on what it stood? Did it stand on anything? If the question offends you, permit me to ask another. Had Howard Dean been an evangelical Christian with an evangelical Christian base, would his followers have deserted him because his Iowa holler made him “unelectable?” Or would they have closed ranks behind him because his stand on the Iraq war made him right?
The NCAA is at it again…
April 29, 2005
I don’t get this…the decision comes down today to add a 12th game to the college football season for every school. Fine, whatever. But the previous word from the NCAA was that their concern for academics prompted them to be unwilling to add a playoff system for a national championship. Instead, they’re adding another game to the BCS.
Every other division of the NCAA has a football playoff system.
Please, NCAA, get real…
Candy From a Baby?
April 28, 2005
Getting this from the Christian Carnival this week, RLC at Viewpoint dissects some of the writing of the folks at the Center for Naturalism, and when you read their words, the folly of their viewpoint is so easy to pick apart. Thanks, RLC!
CFN Offers Lousy Trade, Part III
Makes me want to go back and read parts I and II…
UPDATE: I did go back and read parts I and II, and they’re great as well…check ‘em out yourself!
UPDATE II: Here’s Joe Carter’s take. Try not to wet your pants laughing at the naturalists…
Naturalism for Dummies: Contradictions, Causal Connections, and the Center for Naturalism
And here is the actual website for the Center for Naturalism; as an exercise in sharpening your Christian worldview, go take on these guys yourself, but be nice; they know not what they do…
I’m sorry; one more point. On that website, there’s a link to “help wanted”. It invokes vivid imagination to wonder what kind of help they want there, but the possibilities are pretty funny:
“HELP: we’ve no clue!”
“HELP: we just realized that our philosophy is bankrupt, and we’re just “temporary manifestations of individuality created by the unfolding natural order“.
“HELP, God! Check that…”
This phrase comes from the 1978 "Jonestown massacre" in which most members of the Peoples Temple cult, blindly following their leader Jim Jones, committed suicide by drinking cyanide-laced Kool-Aid.
Osborne: A Contrarian's Guide to Knowing God
Schlossberg: Idols For Destruction
