Photo of the New Joker Out

I found this photo of the new Joker, who's being played by Heath Ledger in the upcoming Dark Knight film, which is due out in 2008. As a longtime fan of Batman and the world of comic books, the Dark Knight himself has always struck me as a libertarian.

After all, Bruce Wayne is a capitalist and an entrepreneur. Moreover, he has always opposed the state. The Joker, on the other hand, is an evil statist who believes in the power of the state and looks to initiate force on those who don't see things his way.

Isn't that a fair assessment or no?

NASA's Space Station Computer Sabotaged

The socialist government agency is hit with another scandal. This time it involves its own space station's computer being sabotaged.

The interesting part about this latest story is the following:

Space officials announced that NASA had been alerted to the possible sabotage early last week by an unnamed subcontracting company. An employee of the company had apparently purposefully damaged two machines, one due to fly in space and one not.

When the company discovered the problem with the non-flying machine, it alerted NASA, which had already received the other computer: and this too was found to have been meddled with.

The Associated Press quotes Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA space operations head honcho, as saying that his people would have discovered the problem during pre-flight testing even had they not been informed.

"The damage is very obvious, easy to detect," he told reporters. "It's not a mystery to us."

And this is what we get with our tax dollars spent on a socialist money-draining government boondoogle without any real value in return?

(Thanks to Lew for his link to the story.)

The Cost of Higher "Government" Education Continue to Skyrocket

Tuition prices for higher "government" government are going through the roof. This comes in anticipation of Congress boosting government grants and rolling back the costs for college student loans.

Here's an excerpt of the report filed by USA Today:

Even as tuition increases at public universities are expected to slow, on average, this year, schools in several states are raising tuition by 10% to more than 15%, adding hundreds of dollars to students' costs.

Driving the increases are budget gaps that have cut the amount of money available for higher education in some states. The tuition increases come as Congress is close to adopting legislation to boost federal grants for low-income students and to lower the cost of student loans.

The collectivists in Congress, the higher "government" education establishment, and government college welfare-dependent college students are just fooling themselves, thinking that furthering and even increasing the government's role in public education (especially higher "government" learning) will make it easier for the government welfare-dependent college students to attend college. After all, this is all modeled on the delusion that every teenager and young adult who graduates from the public "government" schools should go to college. We are talking about a group of collectivists who labor under the delusion -- not to mention, mistakenly believe -- that subsidizing college students at the expense of taxpayers will beget a generation of well-educated college graduates who, once they receive that degree of their choice, are guaranteed to find that entry-level job or launch that successful business.

Have these ignoramuses asked themselves why college tuition costs are going up? This is occuring because too many students are GOING to college. When the Leviathan sets up shop to provide public "government" education and higher "government" learning, tuition costs in both areas are going to rise, because the more financial aid that students receive, the greater the influx of students in the system. Once that happens, tuition costs continue to rise. When was the last time tuition costs for any college -- public or private -- have gone down since the government has stuck its nose and remained in the higher "government" learning picture?

Moreover, college professors are forced to tailor their courses to placate their students who remain indifferent and lazy about their work habits and display an expected lack of work ethic, which they will carry with them for life, especially when they enter the workforce. These students feel that they deserve grades that hardly reflect the true quality of their work. Therefore, the professors find that, in order to better their student evaluations and keep their jobs, they must lower their academic standards to accept uninterested students who are just taking the courses to receive passing grades that they have not truly earned. This gives mediocre-performing students a free pass at the expense of serious students who are working hard and reading the materials covered in class. If the students are not pleased with the grades they have earned from professors who choose not to "grade on a bell curve" (which is a government-sanctioned method of distorting grading methods) because it requires a professor to give students grades in relation to how their peers are graded, they will take their complaints to the dean and the administrators who will, in return, see to it that punishment is meted out with the professors. This is because of universal education, and we must thank the state for this nonsense.

Not only that, when you factor in the fact that too many "customers" (the students, that is) are entering the government college system (all of which are part and parcel of the public sector), deterioriating student and academic standards are part of the norm and continue to rise, and lack of quantity and quality being churned out from the students and the instructors, a college student must ask himself or herself this question: are you really getting anything valuable out of your education? Are you REALLY learning anything in that environment? Are you truly getting your money's worth after all the time and effort you may or may not be putting into it?

More importantly, how much of what you've learned at your college or university -- whether public or private -- has been a paramount part of your success in life?

The only way we can solve this problem and all other problems that plague higher "government" education is to abolish the entire system and establish a free market system of education for students in all levels of education, including college. Imagine tuition costs going down for the first time rather than continuing to rise unabated. Such a radical change in the way we think will truly foster a real learning environment for students and instructors abroad.

For this reason, all levels of education are too important to be left in the hands of the state. If we really care about our educational system, it is incumbent upon us to dismantle the public "government" college system and, in its place, erect a true, laissez-faire college system that will work best for every college student's needs.

NASA Astronauts Drinking and Rocketing

A government aviation report found that a number of NASA astronauts were drinking and rocketing while on duty at least twice.

According to the Washington Post:

Agency spokesman David Mould said one of two reviews of the medical and psychological health of astronauts scheduled to be made public today will include secondhand accounts of astronauts drinking before flights. He said the review does not include the reports in its "findings of fact" but relays the information as something for the agency to investigate.

"We take this and other parts of the reports very seriously and will look into it," Mould said. "But we need to verify the facts before we can know what the appropriate action might be."

This is what we get for redistributing wealth from those who rightfully earned the fruits of their labor to those who didn't, even if it's for the "moral good" of society. And what's worse is that this federal agency, whose sole mission is "to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research," neither engages in space exploration nor scientific discovery nor aeronautics research, even though that is its mission statement. After all, when was the last time NASA went back to the moon? Better yet, when was the last time NASA made a manned attempt to explore the other planets in our own solar system?

Of course, when you hear something like this, the first question that comes to mind is: "Where is Mothers Against Drunking Rocketing when you need them?"