January 2005 Archives

The second part of my appearance on the Full Disclosure program is now available online. Both parts one and two will air throughout Los Angeles on channel 36 on Monday, January 31st (today!), and Friday, February 4th, from 7pm to 8pm (refer to the channel guide). For the streaming video, follow these links: part one, part two.

In a bizarre example of what can happen when a government gets too deep into the private realm (ha), Germany is now threatening to cut benefits to women who refuse to work as prostitutes.

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year. ...

She received a letter from the job centre telling her that an employer was interested in her "profile'' and that she should ring them. Only on doing so did the woman, who has not been identified for legal reasons, realise that she was calling a brothel.

Under Germany's welfare reforms, any woman under 55 who has been out of work for more than a year can be forced to take an available job – including in the sex industry – or lose her unemployment benefit. Last month German unemployment rose for the 11th consecutive month to 4.5 million, taking the number out of work to its highest since reunification in 1990.

The government had considered making brothels an exception on moral grounds, but decided that it would be too difficult to distinguish them from bars. As a result, job centres must treat employers looking for a prostitute in the same way as those looking for a dental nurse. ...

Tatiana Ulyanova, who owns a brothel in central Berlin, has been searching the online database of her local job centre for recruits.

"Why shouldn't I look for employees through the job centre when I pay my taxes just like anybody else?" said Miss Ulyanova.

Indeed! Will some Leftist please explain to me why this isn't a desirable result?

Update:
Aw, too bad... Xrlq says this story is a hoax -- though CBS and Dan Rather aren't sure yet.

Apparently self-esteem isn't all it's cracked up to be. Duh. Here's a link to the article Randy writes about below.

Finally!! A major study by an expert in self esteem commissioned by the American Psychological Society to study the benefits of self-esteem, and the finding is “disappointing.” Professor Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State writes in the Tuesday Opinion Section of the Los Angeles Times:

1. Does not produce better grades
2. Does not produce better work habits or quality
3. Does not result in more friends or better relationships
4. Does not produce better leaders
5. Does not keep people from becoming bullies
6. Does not keep people from cheating, stealing or experimenting with sex or drugs

Anyone who's ever been a kid can tell you that the biggest liars, cheats, and bullies also had the highest self-esteem. So why do people praise self-esteem? Probably because people with it, in heaping quantities, rate themselves as doing better than perhaps they actually are. From Dr. Baumeister's article:

Self-esteem doesn't make adults perform better at their jobs either. Sure, people with high self-esteem rate their own performance better — even declaring themselves smarter and more attractive than their low self-esteem peers — but neither objective tests nor impartial raters can detect any difference in the quality of work.

Likewise, people with high self-esteem think they make better impressions, have stronger friendships and have better romantic lives than other people, but the data don't support their self-flattering views. If anything, people who love themselves too much sometimes annoy other people by their defensive or know-it-all attitudes. Self-esteem doesn't predict who will make a good leader, and some work (including that of psychologist Robert Hogan writing in the Harvard Business Review) has found humility rather than self-esteem to be a key trait of successful leaders.

Gosh, who would've guessed it?

Proverbs 11:2
When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom.

Proverbs 15:33
The fear of the LORD teaches a man wisdom, and humility comes before honor.

Proverbs 18:12
Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.

Proverbs 22:4
Humility and the fear of the LORD bring wealth and honor and life.

Philippians 2:3
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.

And those are just "humility"; do a search on "humble" for further insight and wisdom.

I've written about Stephen Meyer and his peer-reviewed article on the theory of intelligent design, and those posts attracted a large number of comments on his ideas, as well as on evolution and science in general. I'm very curious to read what you all think of the recent witch hunt targeting Richard Sternberg, the journal editor who okayed Dr. Meyer's paper for publication in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington.

Whatever the article's ultimate merits--beyond the judgment of a layman--it was indeed subject to peer review, the gold standard of academic science. Not that such review saved Mr. Sternberg from infamy. Soon after the article appeared, Hans Sues--the museum's No. 2 senior scientist--denounced it to colleagues and then sent a widely forwarded e-mail calling it "unscientific garbage."

Meanwhile, the chairman of the Zoology Department, Jonathan Coddington, called Mr. Sternberg's supervisor. According to Mr. Sternberg's OSC complaint: "First, he asked whether Sternberg was a religious fundamentalist. She told him no. Coddington then asked if Sternberg was affiliated with or belonged to any religious organization. . . . He then asked where Sternberg stood politically; . . . he asked, 'Is he a right-winger? What is his political affiliation?' " The supervisor (who did not return my phone messages) recounted the conversation to Mr. Sternberg, who also quotes her observing: "There are Christians here, but they keep their heads down."

Worries about being perceived as "religious" spread at the museum. One curator, who generally confirmed the conversation when I spoke to him, told Mr. Sternberg about a gathering where he offered a Jewish prayer for a colleague about to retire. The curator fretted: "So now they're going to think that I'm a religious person, and that's not a good thing at the museum."

In October, as the OSC complaint recounts, Mr. Coddington told Mr. Sternberg to give up his office and turn in his keys to the departmental floor, thus denying him access to the specimen collections he needs. Mr. Sternberg was also assigned to the close oversight of a curator with whom he had professional disagreements unrelated to evolution. "I'm going to be straightforward with you," said Mr. Coddington, according to the complaint. "Yes, you are being singled out." Neither Mr. Coddington nor Mr. Sues returned repeated phone messages asking for their version of events.

Are Mr. Coddington and Mr. Sues acting like scientists, or religious zealots persecuting a heretic?

It's hard to read about the jubilation of Iraqi voters without my eyes tearing up.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Some came on crutches, others walked for miles then struggled to read the ballot, but across Iraq, millions turned out to vote Sunday, defying insurgents who threatened a bloodbath. ...

Even in Falluja, the Sunni city west of Baghdad that was a militant stronghold until a U.S. assault in November, a steady stream of people turned out, confounding expectations. Lines of veiled women clutching their papers waited to vote.

"We want to be like other Iraqis, we don't want to always be in opposition," said Ahmed Jassim, smiling after he voted.

Good for you, Mr. Jassim. That's the kind of spirit that's going to be required for you to rebuild your country.

In Baquba, a rebellious city northeast of Baghdad, spirited crowds clapped and cheered at one voting station. In Mosul, scene of some of the worst insurgent attacks in recent months, U.S. and local officials said turnout was surprisingly high. ...

Even in the so-called "triangle of death," a hotbed of Sunni insurgency south of Baghdad, turnout was solid, officials said. ...

Samir Hassan, 32, who lost his leg in a car bomb blast in October, was determined to vote. "I would have crawled here if I had to. I don't want terrorists to kill other Iraqis like they tried to kill me. Today I am voting for peace," he said, leaning on his metal crutches, determination in his reddened eyes.

Americans, Brits, Poles, Aussies, and other foreigners aren't the only ones who have suffered and died for Iraq, despite the way many news reports portray it. Most of the blood has been shed by Iraqis themselves, and this is a great day for their country. A great success.

In Sadr City, a poor Shi'ite neighborhood of northeast Baghdad, thick lines of voters turned out, women in black abaya robes in one line, men in another.

If Sadr City sounds familiar, it's because it was the headquarters of that radical Shi'ite cleric who led a rebellion last year, funded by Iran. And now the people are voting.

One of the biggest surprises was Mosul, a mixed Sunni Arab and Kurd city in the far north. "So far it's gone very well, much better than expected," said a U.S. army officer.

Baghdad's mayor was overcome with emotion by the turnout of voters at City Hall, where he said thousands were celebrating.

"I cannot describe what I am seeing. It is incredible. This is a vote for the future, for the children, for the rule of law, for humanity, for love," Alaa al-Tamimi told Reuters.

Indeed. Americans can learn a thing or two from the Iraqis -- maybe we could get a few thousand gallons of that indelible ink that prevents people from voting more than once, for starters.

There's a particularly encouraging report from Iraq the Model:

The first thing we saw this morning on our way to the voting center was a convoy of the Iraqi army vehicles patrolling the street, the soldiers were cheering the people marching towards their voting centers then one of the soldiers chanted "vote for Allawi" less than a hundred meters, the convoy stopped and the captain in charge yelled at the soldier who did that and said: "You're a member of the military institution and you have absolutely no right to support any political entity or interfere with the people's choice. This is Iraq's army, not Allawi's". This was a good sign indeed and the young officer's statement was met by applause from the people on the street.

Hammorabi has pictures from polling stations.

Jeffrey at Iraqi Bloggers Central has a summary of blog coverage, largely by Iraqi bloggers I hadn't heard about until now.

Steven Vincent issues a stern rebuke to lefties like Marko Zuniga:

And what of our friends on the Left? I'm sorry they can't share in our joy--because there is no reason they should not. Alas, like the Muslim Scholars Association, they, too, decided to "boycott" the elections. For example, here is what the great lefty website Daily Kos had to say yesterday:

The war is long past lost. Time to pack it in, and save the lives of our men and women in uniform that will otherwise face a barrage of bullets and RPG rounds during their extended stay in the desert.

Clearly, Dean-shill Marko Zuniga has an odd perception of liberalism. On a day when millions of Iraqi citizens stood up against the specter of fascism to exercise their rights as free and dignified human beings, Zuniga claims the election is "simply an exercise in pretty pictures." Tell that to the Iraqis who danced and cried for joy at the chance to vote, Mr. Zuniga. Tell that to people who have suffered for decades under a tyrant whose crimes were brutal to the point of madness. Tell that to the men and women who died to make this day a reality.

Doesn't it bother the Left that they've positioned themselves such that today -- such a great day for Democracy -- they're inescapably grouped with losers like Saddam Hussein and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, doomed to the wrong side of history?

Hindrocket at Power Line Blog has more pictures of Iraqi's voting. Friends of Democracy has election day photos also.

I love Los Angeles, but I hate downtown. It totally and completely sucks. The streets were laid out by retarded dyslexics who liked to drive in endless circles. The freeway junctions are ridiculously useless -- you can't get back to anything you pass, and there are lots of places you can see that you can't get to at all. There are innumerable exits with no corresponding entrances, so if you get off the freeway in the wrong place you're basically doomed. Traffic everywhere for no reason; people crossing the street at 0.00001 miles per hour; intersections you aren't allowed to turn at, in any direction; signs that purport to you lead to the freeway, but don't; streets that are one-way in some places but not in others. I hate it.

Xrlq vindicates my April, 2003, prediction that John Kerry's election defeat would be hailed as a victory due to "beating the spead".

I believe that 9/11 was the central deciding issue in this race. And the tape – we were rising in the polls up until the last day when the tape appeared. We flat-lined the day the tape appeared and went down on Monday. I think it had an impact. But 9/11, you know, it’s a very difficult hurdle when a country is at war. I applauded the president’s leadership in the days immediately afterwards. I thought he did a good job in that, and he obviously connected to the American people in those immediate days. When a country is at war and in the wake of 9/11, it’s very difficult to shift horses in midstream. I think it’s remarkable we came as close as we did as a campaign. Many Republicans say we beat their models by four or five points as to what they thought we could achieve.

Actually though, he didn't beat the spread I got on Tradesports -- I ended up quadrupling my money by betting against him on election day.

Wretchard has an excellent post on how the Democratic party, even while desperately struggling to regain its footing after a decade of devestating defeats, refuses to consider the unthinkable.

In a memorandum distributed by the New Democractic Network, Rosenberg summarized what he thought to be the salient components of the conservative revolution. The Democratic Party had in its way, suffered a private and political 9/11 -- an asymmetrical assault from the right -- due Rosenberg believed, to four reasons.

1. The Republican/conservative alliance has built a superior information-age political machine.
2. As an intellectually-based movement born when the Republicans were a true minority Party, their infrastructure is built on a foundation on the need to persuade.
3. 9/11 gave the Republicans an opening that they have adroitly exploited.
4. Bush’s brand of conservatism has had a particularly big impact in the South.
5. The new Republican momentum with Hispanics is a grave threat.

From a superficial point of view, Rosenberg's analysis fits all the facts he cares to acknowledge. But it begs the question of whether conservative ideas have succeeded, at least in part, because they were more consonant with reality than the 'progressive' ideas of the Left. It is not my intention to prove the superiority of one ideology over the other; simply to point out that the very possibility is excluded from Rosenberg's analysis; and by excluding the possibility that Conservative ascendance might be due to a careful selection of 'correct' positions into their portfolio, the NDN is really assuming what must be proved.

The Democrats refuse to acknowledge that they may be faltering simply because their positions do not resonate with reality. The 20th century was dominated by leftist experiments, all of which were miserable failures. If Democrats are crass power-seekers, they'd do well to recognize this sea-change -- and if they genuinely want to help humanity, doubly so.

Does anyone know much about animal mating in the wild? Do wild animals commonly mate with their near relatives? For instance, male fish can't possibly know which eggs in the water are from their mothers or daughters; they must fertilize indiscriminately. What about mammals? Do bull lions mate with their daughters after driving other males away? Lots of mammals operate in groups with a single dominant male that mates with all the females, which must include his own relatives.

My friend Randy Kirk has just started a blog titled The Truth About Everything. So far he's tackled evolution, chocolate diets, and the dearth of punny women. No word yet on the Master of None signature water bottle, but how can I be refused now?

DeoDuce has a perspective on the upcoming election in Iraq from her vantage point as an Iraqi American.

Not many of us know what it was like to live under Saddam Hussein. Even with all of the horror stories from friends and family members of the Hussein regime, I too am in the dark as to fully comprehend the enormity of the terror the Iraqi people suffered as I was privileged to have been born here in the United States. Thank God.

We equate Auschwitz with death (and necessarily so) and Rwanda with genocide. However, what happened to 1-6 million Iraqis who disappeared under Saddam's reign? It was an Iraqi Holocaust. It was a Kurdish Holocaust. It was a human Holocaust. Some people simply cannot seem to understand this. No amount of debate or words can lessen lack of comprehension of moral matters or matters so inherently serious as mass evil. Whatever the case, I wonder if the Iraqis can muster the strength, energy, and hope to go to the polls and reassert their pride and Right to Exist upon the Map of Human Races. We, as Americans, have helped the Iraqi people say "no more." Now it is time for the Iraqis to say "never again." Will they vote?

They'll vote, and some will die for it. As Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Iraqi patriots will shed their blood on Sunday, and we can only hope that the blood of their former tyrant will not be far behind.

How much is the little ^TM next to "Coca-Cola" worth? How about more than US$15 billion per year? According to this ACNeilsen report, there are 43 worldwide billion-dollar brands, and Coke tops them all, followed by Marlboro. The complete list, by value:

Coca-Cola
Marlboro
Pepsi
Budweiser
Campbell’s
Kellogg’s
Pampers
Benson & Hedges
Camel
Danone
Fanta
Friskies
Gillette
Huggies
Nescafe
Sprite
Tide
Tropicana
Wrigley’s
Colgate
Duracell
Heineken
Kodak
L&M
Lay’s
Pedigree
Always North
Doritos
Energizer
Gatorade
Guinness
Kinder
Kleenex
L’Oreal
Maxwell House
Minute Maid
Nivea
Pantene
Philadelphia
Pringles
Seven-Up/7-Up
Tylenol
Whiskas

It's interesting that the top brands are sodas, cigarettes, and beers. Make sure to note that the study only includes brands that have a presence all around the world.

Oligopoly Watch has a table with more information, so rather than recreate it I'll just point you there.

Ken at Chicago Boyz makes an excellent observation with regard to flying cars: they aren't meant to operate over cities, they're mean to replace cities.

For all of these purposes, the flying car serves not as a means of traveling within a city, but as a substitute for the city itself! Instead of shortening the distance between people and enterprises by crowding them into a city, the skycar shortens the travel time while allowing the people themselves to live hundreds of miles away from their jobs, their friends, and their favorite shops. A few dozen houses may be clumped together in a single clearing, or a single house may stand on its own, but in either case small neighborhoods and single office buildings/strip malls/large stores will be surrounded by miles of wilderness, and people will spend most of their time endangering nothing but trees or grass if they happen to suffer mechanical failure, and enjoying plenty of space between themselves and the nearest fellow traveler.

He also observes that decentralizing our population will make our country more resistant to terrorist attacks (even nuclear weapons). Not to mention the potential environmental benefits to be had, and the psychological benefits of lower population density. I suspect most people would live in town-sized clusters of 2,000 to 5,000 people, rather than the tiny villages Ken describes, but I agree that the megalopolis may eventually be a thing of the past.

University of Colorado professor Ward L. Churchill is arguing that the 9/11 victims were legitimate targets for our enemies to strike at, and he calls the hijackers "combat teams" rather than terrorists. Sure, Churchill is a repulsive fool, but even aside from that I think his comments are pointless. It doesn't really matter to me what you call our enemies; why quibble over vocabulary?

The real crux of the issue is that by changing the vocabulary, Churchill and others of his ilk are attempting to advance a more subtle arguement: if the people killed on 9/11 were "legitimate targets" rather than innocent victims, then we're not justified in avenging their deaths. But is that true? If our military forces are attacked by honorable enemies, it's still a declaration of war and we're still entitled to fight back.

So what's the point Churchill is trying to make? Even if his position is accurate, we're still justified in crushing our enemies; if their attack on 9/11 was justified as retaliation for our earlier attacks, then our subsequent attacks must likewise be justified. His essay is pointless as an argument for unilaterally stopping the conflict; all it can hope to achieve is to make Americans and terrorists into moral equivalents, thereby scoring some sort of abstract philisophical point.

I, however, am not particularly interested in the philosophy behind the War on Terror. I don't really care "why they hate us" -- or even that they hate us -- I just want them to stop killing my countrymen. The root causes are irrelevant to me, because I'm not after "justice"; we'll never reach agreement on that, so let's leave it to God. I just want to win.

Update:

Clayton Cramer agrees that the essay was pointless and trite. Sometimes I think the American left has no purpose other than to make the rest of us feel as bad about ourselves as they do about theirselves.

As you can see, the ad space on the right sidebar has been empty for a week or so, except for the excellent folks running the online bingo ad at the top. As a good capitalist I've decided that the vacancy indicates that my prices were too high, so I've lowered them. Yes, never let it be said that Michael Williams doesn't put his money where his mouth is: I didn't go to my Congressional delegation and ask for a government bailout or insist that America impose tariffs on foreign blogs. Not hardly! I trust instead that the free market will provide a customer for my product -- namely, 1,500 pairs of eyes per day, most of which belong to readers who are young, affluent, and well-educated. Get it while it's hot.

Ryan at The Dead Parrot Society links to a report on a survey of journalists and readers he worked on that asked its respondents to decide whether they would publish certain graphic news photos. He writes that journalists and readers all focused on similar concerns when making the decision, but that journalists were 10% to 15% more likely to publish than were readers. This makes sense to me, and as he quotes:

"It's probably safe to say that journalists as a group are more likely to ground their moral decisions in duty," [said Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute.] "They believe it is their duty to inform. In the wider public arena, a greater portion of people are going to ground their moral decisions in care. That means they would be concerned about harming the people in the photos, as well as the audience who might view the photo."

According to the survey, journalists are wary of becoming mouthpieces for "terrorist propaganda" -- yet as Wretchard at Belmont Club has noted, they often appear to do just that.

So what's the right answer? Frankly, I wouldn't care what images the media chose to show as long as they made it clear that they're on our side and want America to achieve complete and total victory. The only reason there's worry about helping the terrorists is because the media refuses to take the side of the good guys. That doesn't mean they should be issuing American propaganda or lies, but they also shouldn't let any of their viewers doubt where their loyalties lie: to their country, or merely to their profession?

The problem is similar to that faced by many international "human rights" groups. They don't get anywhere publishing articles about the evil of terrorists and tyrannical regimes, because everyone knows. Kim Jong Il starves his people and keeps hundreds of thousands in concentration camps? Big deal. Uday Hussein snatches girls off the street to rape and murder them? Who cares. China controls its population using forced abortions? Whatever. American soldiers strip their prisoners naked and take pictures? Stop the presses!

Tim Tagaris makes an excellent observation, pointing out that politicians should be as concerned with Google as they are with yard signs. He lists Google results for Martin Frost and Tim Roemer, two men who have thrown their hats into the ring for the DNC chairmanship, and most of them are negative articles opining on why neither of the men is fit for the position. To add insult to injury:

This doesn't even include the fact that you see advertisements for Donnie Fowler and Simon Rosenberg on the right-hand-side of the Google results page. ...

And yes -- there is a blog ad for Donnie, Simon AND someone who placed a blog ad with the question, "Are You Happy Bush Won? Respond Now And You Can Get A Free Laptop!"

The point of advertising, endorsements, and yard signs is to create the impression that everyone is talking about you, everyone likes you, and everyone wants you in the job. If the top ten Google results on your name are all negative, everyone is going to know exactly the opposite.

Getting high in the Google ranks for your own name is hard (especially if you have a common name like Michael Williams, though I'm now number one), but if you can't get anyone to write anything favorable about you at least go to the trouble of buying advertising keyed to your name. You can sure bet that if you don't, your opponents will.

What's more, I can't find a single large corporation that isn't the number one hit for its own name. If people chasing dollars are doing it, so should be people chasing votes.

It's hard to know whether or not to write about such things, but since the damage to New York's C line is making major headlines it can serve as an example. No one wants to give terrorists unfamiliar with our society any ideas of how to damage us, but the ease with which the subway was crippled should prompt us all to think of the weak points we see in our daily lives and what we can do to keep an eye on them.

A fire in a subway control room has put the C line out of service for up to five years and caused serious problems on the A line that will make the commute miserable for hundreds of thousands of subway riders, officials said yesterday.

The unstaffed room containing 600 electrical devices called "relays" that are used to power signals and switches along a segment of the vital Eighth Avenue line were destroyed Sunday in the blaze.

Cops blamed a vagrant who set a shopping cart full of wood blocks ablaze six feet into the tracks at the Chambers Street station. Cops are searching for the derelict.

Why wasn't the relay station closed off? Even a cheap metal door could have stopped a shopping cart full of wood. Simple security enhancements can do a lot to deter criminals and to make crime more difficult. We should all be attentive to our surroundings and do what we can to protect our country and our infrastructure.

The first installment of my appearance on the Emmy-winning Full Disclosure program is now available online. I'm informed that parts one and two will air throughout Los Angeles on channel 36 on Monday, January 31st, and Friday, February 4th, from 7pm to 8pm (refer to the channel guide). If you don't have cable service (as I don't) then you can watch the streaming video here: part one.

Eduwonk describes how the teachers' union in San Diego is doing its utmost to prevent reform and harm children for its own profit.

Superintendent Alan Bersin is poised to reorganize several of the city's chronically underperforming schools. At two of the three schools a majority of teachers have voted to make the schools charter schools to help facilitate this and at all three 60-80 percent of parents voted to do the same. Remember, these are not schools that didn't do well "on a single test" but schools that have not done right by students for years.

Yet the school board member who represents these schools has apparently decided to oppose this and in the process force a vote on buying out the remainder of Bersin's contract because he won't play ball. Possible reasons for her move? (A) It's a great way for her to make a lifelong friend of the Bersin-loathing teachers' union there. Or (B) concerns that if several schools in her district become semi-autonomous it will hurt her political clout and power on the board. There is no (C) because it's generally agreed that changes are in the interest of the kids....600 parents showed up at a recent school board meeting to push for these changes.

Note that it's not even the teachers; in two of the three schools the teachers affirmed the proposed changed. It's the unions that are attempting to thwart the will of the parents, teachers, and administrators. It's unfortunate, but teachers' unions (and most unions, these days) are societal parasites that don't benefit anyone but their rulers -- not even their members.

Paul Sperry has a great article in Reason Online about resume and diploma fraud, particularly among our public servants.

Laura L. Callahan was very proud of her Ph.D. When she received it a few years ago, she promptly rewrote her official biography to highlight the academic accomplishment, referring to it not once or twice but nine times in a single-page summary of her career. And she never let her employees at the Labor Department, where she served as deputy chief information officer, forget it, even demanding that they call her "Doctor." ...

"When she was running around telling people to call her 'Dr. Callahan,' I asked where she got her degree," says Richard Wainwright a computer specialist who worked for Callahan at Labor for two years. "When I found out, I laughed."

It turns out Callahan got her precious sheepskin from Hamilton University. Not Hamilton College, the highly competitive school in Clinton, New York, but Hamilton University, the unaccredited fee-for-degree "distance learning" center in Evanston, Wyoming, right on the Utah border. Such diploma mills frequently use names similar to those of accredited schools.

Unbeknown to Callahan, Wainwright had once lived near the small town of Evanston (population: 10,903) and knew it well. As a student at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where he received his bachelor's degree years ago, he had made beer runs to Evanston, less than 60 miles away. He knew there were no universities there, or at least none worth attending. "Evanston doesn't have much but a few motels and liquor stores," he tells me. "I looked up Hamilton University on the Web and saw it was an old Motel 6, and I knew it was bogus."

A few minutes with Google would probably save our government billions of dollars and increase productivity at the same time. This type of fraud isn't new, and it's one of the reasons why I have very little respect for most public sector workers. No evil private corporation would fall for this kind of nonsense -- not without going out of business, anyway.