In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Roman Catholic Archishoop of San Antonio Gustavo Garcia-Siller became a prominent figure at my old Cold Case File blog when he removed Fr Christopher Phillips as pastor of the Our Lady of the Atonement "Anglican use" parish in that diocese. Phillips was highly popular in some traditionalist Catholic circles, especially those that favored a hybrid Anglican-Catholic liturgy that was anything but traditional. At the time of that controversy, I was on the archbishop's side. A vocal minority at the Atonement parish objected to Phillips's cult-like leadership, and as matters developed, it appeared that he had tolerated highly questionable conduct by his deacon with teen boys. There were also allegations of financial mismanagement. In that circumstance, as I got reports from parishioners, former parishioners, and other San Antonio Catholics, the archbishop struck me as a solid, even courageous, figure. Over the weekend, a visitor sent me links to a new controversy invol...

According to Breitbart News , Allstate, the sponsor of Thursday’s Sugar Bowl contest between Notre Dame and Georgia, appears to have deleted CEO Tom Wilson’s post-terror attack message, which aired before the game and ignited a firestorm of controversy online. As I noted Friday , Allstate had already issued a mushy statement sorta-kinda walking back wilson's original wording: On Thursday, Allstate issued a statement to Fox News Digital condemning the terrorist attack and attempting to clarify its CEO’s message. “To be clear, Allstate CEO Tom Wilson unequivocally condemns this heinous act of terrorism and violence in all forms,” the statement read. “We stand with the families of the victims, their loved ones, and the community of New Orleans. The reference to overcoming divisiveness and negativity reflects a broader commitment to fostering trust and positivity in communities across the nation.” This need to clarify had me wondering where the pressure came ...

A lot of people, I think, get a lot wrong about security and AI. Twenty years ago, when I was briefly involved in the Dartmouth alumni trustee movement, I participated in online discussions among students and alumni that taught me a lot. I discovered that a major complaint among conservative students was that they had to swap electronic ID cards to get in and out of the dorm buildings. They felt this was a restriction on their freedom. I had a career spent partly on the road, and I thought that electronic key cards in hotels were a major advance in traveler safety. Why would anyone object to something like this? Well, they didn't like the idea that someone could look up where they'd been and when they'd gone in and out. I tried explaining that a record like that could actually be in their favor -- in an age of unsubstantiated rape accusations, for instance, it could prove you weren't in someone's dorm when they claimed you were. They still didn't like it, an...

NEW: Allstate CEO Tom Wilson says Americans need to overcome their "addiction of divisiveness" and "accept people's differences" following the terror attack in New Orleans. If only Shamsud Din Jabbar had heard this message two days ago! The comment was made at the start of the… pic.twitter.com/WDPWZhPrru — Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 2, 2025 One thing I'm hoping for is that the national mood will stop tolerating the ostentatious display of luxury beliefs. As of 2023 , Allstate CEO Tom Wilson collected $15 million in total compensation in 2022, down from $19.1 million in 2021. Citing the company’s proxy statement filed with the SEC, Crain’s Chicago Business reported that the decrease in compensation was largely due to the annual cash bonus paid for a single year’s operating performance, which came in at 58% of Wilson's target bonus. Since that target is three times his salary, which sat at nearly $1.4 million last year, the bonus ...

Hold up. An FBI Agent with a nose ring who can barely speak coherent English sentences told the media that a terrorist driving a truck with an ISIS flag killing 10 Americans is NOT a terrorist attack!?! Seriously. listen to this We need Kash Patel NOW! pic.twitter.com/v2sjeJ2bcH — Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) January 1, 2025 The tweets in response to this one on the thread definitely weren't unaninmously in agreement. Some didn't see anything wrong with a nose ring, while others thought an obvious grammatical error was OK, since she was clearly nervous or something. I've never been a public spokesman, but I'm broadly familiar with policies over statements to the press, and from what I see here, several things aren't quite right. First, any public statenment made to the press concerning an incident like this is normally drafted with some care and produced in writing to be approved up the chain of command. It can't be otherwise. As far as I can tell, this was...

After I posted yesterday, it dawned on me that I hadn't mentioned a major country that sends workers here via H1B or other, similar preferential programs, China. This is partly because the media discussions haven't mentioned it, either. But one thing this limits in the discussion is the extent to which the foreign workers' poor English limits their effectiveness. Workers from India are less of a problem, because the British colonial background made English a highly useful second language for the whole country that otherwise had different regional languages. As a result, a dialect called South Asian English is fully recognized, and it's understood fairly well by speakers of US English. This doesn't completely eliminate the problem, though, because, due to the US background, English is also commonly spoken in the Philippines, and while Filipino English is understandable to speakers of US English, South Asian English and Filipino English are less mutually intelli...

As I said yesterday, the people writing aboput H1B visas have never worked in tech, and they're getting basic things wrong. They start, for example, with this assumption : The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations requiring specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher. These occupations often include fields like IT, engineering, mathematics, and medicine. But this glosses over important distinctions. In medicine, I'm assuming they want MDs or PhDs. In engineering or mathematics, they might want BSEEs, MS, or PhDs. But IT is a very different field. The people who work directly on the keyboard, programmers, operators, system engineers, webmasters, network specialists, program librarians, and the llke, often don't have any type of four-year or even two-year degree. So I keep asking the question, why do we claim to be scouring the world for the best and the brightest when the US-born ...