Hybrid limousines?

Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to the many Hollywood Al Gore fans who arrived at the Oscar presentations in gas-saving hybrids and ethanol-powered mini-cars. How they kept their tuxedos unrumpled and their coiffeurs unmussed is beyond us.

Those traveling on ethanol deserve special praise for using a fuel that, estimating generously, yields only about 25 percent more energy than it takes to make it. It has an energy content so far below that of regular gas, the vehicles need fuel tanks 50 percent larger than normal.

What's that? None of the Hollywood elite arrived in gas-saving hybrids or ethanol-powered mini-cars? They all rode in gas-guzzling limousines? It's too shocking to contemplate.

TRENDING: Prof rejects calls to resign after rebuking his 'woke' university

Scientist Howard Bashford set up a secret apparatus outside the Oscars and measured the intellectual energy flux as the audience applauded a joke about Al Gore winning the 2000 presidential election. Bashford refused to reveal how his machine worked but did reveal its peak reading: One watt.

Spanking spanked?

California Assemblywoman Sally Lieber seems to have thrown in the towel on her anti-spanking measure, but the key words here are ''seems to.'' Rather than go all out to ban the posterior swat, she has chosen the route of liberal incrementalism. This entails introducing a bill that doesn't fundamentally change the laws on child abuse but adds some weird language.

Lieber's Assembly Bill 755 would make it a crime to hit a kid with (but not limited to) ''a stick, a rod, a switch, an electrical cord, an extension cord, a belt, a broom or a shoe.'' A broom? Hasn't this woman ever heard of the back of a hairbrush? What kind of twisted upbringing did she have?

At any rate, the purpose is to start shoehorning details into the child-abuse statutes until the open-handed smack on the fundament finally is outlawed. After all, if you oppose Lieber's concept, you must vote against the entire bill, not just part of it. What legislator wants it said that he opposed a ban on whipping with electrical cords, or the ''throwing, kicking, burning or cutting a child'' or ''interference with a child's breathing?''

The spanking battle is far from over.

File under ''Confirming the Obvious''

A pair of depressing studies were published in the last couple of weeks, and the cause of their dismal findings may be traced right back to California's Legislature, where a collective mental disorder spawned the ''self-esteem movement.''

A San Diego State University survey found that college students today are more narcissistic and self-centered than ever. Prof. Jean Twenge, who headed the study, said narcissists tend to lack empathy, react aggressively to criticism and favor self-promotion over helping others.

Tracing the problem back to the self-esteem craze, Twenge said, "We need to stop endlessly repeating 'You're special' and having children repeat that back. Kids are self-centered enough already."

At last the ''experts'' are saying what common sense should have told us decades ago: that true self-esteem comes from achievement rather than unearned praise and ''participation'' trophies. But in the '80s the Legislature put money into error and local governments, ever anxious for funds, dutifully assembled self-esteem task forces and promoted feel-good psychobabble.

Like so many things, good and bad, that arise in California, the movement swept across the nation. The results may be found in a pair of U.S. Department of Education studies that show grades have risen in public education while actual learning has declined.

And the problem doesn't show in grade inflation alone. It's also evident in ''advanced'' courses with high-sounding titles but dumbed-down content.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Daria Hall of the Education Trust: ''What it suggests is that we are telling students that they're being successful in these courses when, in fact, we're not teaching them any more than they were learning in the past.

''So we are, in effect, lying to these students.''

Yours truly has seen the effect of this institutionalized mendacity: University students who received ''A'' grades in English but could not construct a simple declarative sentence; products of the ''critical thinking'' approach who possessed neither the factual background nor logical ability to think through any issue; ''scholars'' with high grade averages (both high school and college) who were no more qualified to be enrolled at a university than the meanest shopping cart/aluminum can collector.

It's all something for the rest of our nation to think about when California takes the lead in anything. For instance, treatment of illegal aliens:

Pelosi pushes Golden State approach

California already allows illegals to pay resident tuition at the state's colleges and universities, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, thinks it would be swell if they received this benefit nationwide – plus public financial aid. Pelosi notes that ''rolling back tax cuts'' ... ''may be necessary'' to pay for this.

The bill is called, appropriately, ''the Dream Act,'' as in ''dreaming of new Democrat voters.''

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