Not a moment too soon either:

There’s been a sharp drop in the percentage of America’s children being bullied or beaten up by their peers, according to a new national survey by experts who believe anti-bullying programs are having an impact.

The study, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, found that the percentage of children who reported being physically bullied over the past year had declined from nearly 22 percent in 2003 to under 15 percent in 2008. The percentage reporting they’d been assaulted by other youths, including their siblings, dropped from 45 percent to 38.4 percent.

The lead author of the study, Professor David Finkelhor, said he was “very encouraged.”

So am I.

I try to avoid “causes” but this is one that is close to home and has been since growing up in Palm Beach.  The traditionally blasé attitude of too many American schools towards this has always bothered me.  It’s good to see that there are positive changes afoot here.

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My fellow South Floridian Gerald Posner has gotten himself into quite a pickle at the Daily Beast after accusations of plagiarism:

Last Friday, Jack Shafer in Slate ran an article pinpointing five sentences from one of my stories in The Daily Beast, which I admitted met the definition of plagiarism and I accepted full responsibility for that error, an incident I called “accidental plagiarism.” On Monday, he had found other examples, and although I disagreed with some of his characterizations, I again accepted full accountability…

This afternoon I received a call from Edward Felsenthal, the excellent managing editor of The Daily Beast. He informed me that as part of the Beast’s internal investigation, they had uncovered more instances in earlier articles of mine in which there the same problems of apparent plagiarism as the ones originally brought to life last Friday by Shafer. I instantly offered my resignation and Edward accepted.

The Daily Beast’s motto is “Read This. Skip That.”  With plagiarism, you can read both and get the same thing, which means (in theory) that one is unnecessary.

As a part time academic, I am always on the lookout for student work that has the look of “déja vu all over again.”  In that setting, plagiarism translates into a student getting a grade without learning what they’re supposed to.  I have to admit that, in this age of cut and paste, it’s a lot easier to do, but it doesn’t change the reality.

In journalism and book writing, the biggest problem in plagiarism is twofold: it fails to acknowledge the source and it runs into copyright problems.  In the ancient world most historians were reticent about acknowledging their sources, weaving whatever sources they had into a narrative whose veracity isn’t always easy to check (the likes of Herodotus, Thucydides and Tacitus come to mind.)  It was the Christian Eusebius of Caesarea who started the trend by quoting acknowledged sources verbatim. This could be taken as somewhat lazy but, in some ways, set the standard for subsequent writers of all kinds.  (He also set the standard for a heavy, verbose writing style, but that’s for another post…)

The Beast, however, should cut him some slack.  Don’t they have a column called “The Cheat Sheet?”

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And in this case I’m not referring to the attorneys:

Sharks gathered off Reef Road Thursday morning, but were not moving into public swimming areas.

Mark Hassell, town lifeguard supervisor, reported Thursday that no sharks were seen congregating at Midtown Beach or Phipps Ocean Park. Both public beaches remained open.

Midtown Beach was closed for about 30 minutes last week when a group of sharks moved through the area.

Rick Wentley, owner of PB Boys Club and an avid surfer, said he checked conditions Thursday morning with the thought of going out.

Although he usually surfs in the North End, he said he was going to move farther south along the Palm Beach shoreline — just in case — to avoid sharks. But it turned out the waves just weren’t there.

Sharks typically migrate north in March and April.

Gary Goss, professor of biology at Palm Beach Atlantic University and a local shark expert, said the grouping of sharks is most likely a prelude to the upcoming seasonal migration.

The schooling behavior is typical for fish and the sharks that go after them for food, he said.

“They’re getting ready to go north.”

The seasonal migration pattern is a well-honoured practice amongst the human residents:  south to winter in Palm Beach (with the social season to go with it,) then north for the summer.  So why not the sharks?

My family was somewhat exceptional in being year-round residents.

And now for something completely different: saw this piece about Republican “activist” and philanthropist Helen Cluett:

When is it time to get out of politics? A) When you’re about to turn 90. B) When you realize that all of the candidates you’ve backed have lost. C) Never.

Helen Cluett will tell you the answer for her was B, but if you dig a little deeper you’ll see that the real answer is C.

Cluett turns 90 in May, and she says she’s “worked my fingers to the bone” for the Republican Party, and that it’s time to step aside to let a younger crowd take over the battle.

And you may in fact not see Cluett working the phone banks in 2012 or even this fall when the fate of Congress again is put before the American electorate.

But she’ll be deeply involved — if only to argue a point or two with visitors, family and friends. That’s the nature of one of Palm Beach’s most noted activists, both in politics and in charitable causes.

The Cluetts were the “sellers of shirts” whose weight on the vestry of my home church Bethesda-by-the-Sea was crucial in the 1968 booting of my mother’s ladies guild’s rummage sale from the church proper. That in turn led to the start of the Church Mouse resale shop, now something of a Palm Beach institution.  Obviously Helen wasn’t directly involved in that, as in that time there were no women on the Vestry (her husband Bill was another story.)  But for me, active in both Republican politics and the church, it’s hard not to feel an affinity with someone who has been diligent in the G.O.P. and lists Jesus Christ as a “most admired person” in the Shiny Sheet.  Besides, the whole Church Mouse saga is a classic “lemons to lemonade” story.

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If Galbraith, whose economics are back in vogue again, wasn’t one, they don’t exist:

Here we reach the heart of the matter. Galbraith’s thinking about social and economic matters was always de haut en bas; his solutions emerged from the Olympian heights of his own ratiocination, to be applied to the clueless multitudes below. (No doubt his own great height, over 6 foot 8, accustomed him to looking down on people.) His literary style is symptomatic of his attitude, a true case of the style being the man himself. Hundreds of times, he uses question-begging locutions that intimidate with their orotund grandeur. I open a book of his at random and find the following: “The controlling fact is”; “This trade-off is present in all accepted thought”; “Nor should one wish otherwise”; “It has now been adequately urged”; “This is not a matter of choice; it is the modern imperative”; “It would, of course, be a serious error”; “This has long been recognized”; “All of this is to be welcomed”; “The lesson is clear”; “The solution is not difficult; it has the advantage of inevitability.”

The cumulative effect is to intimidate those who believe themselves not well enough informed to contradict so high an authority. We are far from the realm of Jane Austen’s light and ironic “It is a truth universally acknowledged.” When J. K. Galbraith enunciates a truth universally acknowledged, he does not want us to smile inwardly; he wants us to fear not being included in le tout Paris of correct, generous, and humane thought. What fool does not wish to be on the side of the inevitable? Who does not want to recognize what has so long been recognized? Who dares to deny that what the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics says three times is true?

It’s hard to convince most Americans that a) those who are raised at the top hold a high opinion of themselves and a low one of the rest of humanity and b) they’re so convinced of their own rectitude that they’re oblivious to the real nature of their idea.  It’s been that way for a long time.  As I said in a post about growing up in Palm Beach:

Attitudes from the “coasts” about “flyover country” in the U.S. have been deep seated for a long time; stage productions like this only reinforced that. It’s fair to say that, if the “Religious Right” had fully grasped the contempt they were held in when the movement first got going in the late 1970’s they would not have started the Moral Majority: they would have started a revolution.

Dalrymple also notes this:

There remains, however, an astonishingly gaping absence in Galbraith’s worldview. While he is perfectly able to see the defects of businessmen—their inclination to megalomania, greed, hypocrisy, and special pleading—he is quite unable to see the same traits in government bureaucrats. It is as if he has read, and taken to heart, the work of Sinclair Lewis, but never even skimmed the work of Kafka.

Had he done this, his view of the world would have been much more cynical and less roseate.  Besides, he should have read Kafka long before Sinclair Lewis.

Why?  Because Kafka is European!  Any real elitist snob knows that!

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Casey Johnson is just the latest reminder:

Casey Johnson, the socialite daughter of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and heiress to the Johnson & Johnson business empire has died, a spokesman for the family and police said. She was 30.

TMZ.com reported that Johnson was found dead Monday. Police officers responded to her Los Angeles home around 11:51 a.m. where paramedics had already pronounced Johnson dead, officer Sara Faden said.

Most of the commentary centres on the fact that she was a lesbian, but for me the fact that she was an heiress is most significant.

There’s a school of thought out there that, if you have wealth, you have it made.  That’s the underpinning behind a lot of things in this country.  If we are rich, we are told, we are happy and successful.

But it doesn’t always work out.  As a Palm Beacher, I found that out first hand, with my own schoolmates.  Many of them, with famous names and inherited fortunes, had miserable lives, many of which have been cut short (and the money that fuelled them usually runs out first.)  The principal culprit in the shortened lifespan is drug and alcohol abuse.  Wealth bought many things, but it could not fill the void of an empty life.  Filling it with sex, drugs, rock and roll and alcohol only put toxic substances into the shell which ate away at it until it too was gone.  Throwing money at the problem with rehab didn’t work because a) a lot of rehab doesn’t have victory as an objective and b) when you’re rich, it’s easier to say no to any form of help.

We can lust after wealth all we want and achieve it, but as long as Jesus Christ does not reign in our lives we are empty.  Once that is done, then we have the following:

Do not then ask anxiously ‘What can we get to eat?’ or ‘What can we get to drink?’ or ‘What can we get to wear?’ All these are the things for which the nations are seeking, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But first seek his Kingdom and the righteousness that he requires, and then all these things shall be added for you. (Matthew 6:31-33)

To see what happens to people like Casey Johnson grieves me.  But it can be fixed:

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A nice view this time of year; it comes from the Ritz-Carlton in Manalapan, FL, taken in June 2001, before 9/11 and most of the craziness of this decade past.

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It is with sadness that I note the death of Prince Alexandre de Rethy, whose 1965 visit to Palm Beach (and our home) was documented in the piece A Royal Visit: Prince Alexandre de Rethy’s Visit to Palm Beach.

He passed away 29 November 2009 due to an acute pulmonary embolism.  He was 67.

My deep condolences go out to his family.

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VirtueOnline chronicles the adventures of the Rev. Marta Weeks in her quest for same sex marriage:

The American Anglican Council blew the whistle on the “Listening process” revealing that a $1.5 million gift came from The Rev. Marta Weeks, a retired Episcopal priest. Now Meeks openly advocates same-sex blessings. The money given by the Episcopal priest will be monitored by a group of sex “experts” who advocate a vision of sexual freedom and “justice” that bears little resemblance to mainstream Christian doctrine or tradition. At least one of these “experts” believes that pornography, bestiality, and multiple sex partners are not inherently harmful or wrong, wrote Robert Lundy of AAC.

I think the “listening process” has always stunk.

But my first question when reading this was simple: how did an Episcopal minister (or “priest” as they like to say, although they turn around and don’t want women to be referred to as “priestesses,” even though it’s logical) become a millionaire?  Isn’t this the church of social justice?  Haven’t we gotten past the church where scions of prominent families who weren’t cut out for the family business encouraged to become men of the cloth?

Not entirely.  Not, evidently, in the land where the animals are tame and the people run wild.

This piece, from the University of Miami’s website, explains things in part:

The Reverend Weeks and her late husband, L. Austin Weeks, have provided significant philanthropic support for the University in many areas, including a naming gift for the Marta and Austin Weeks Music Library and Technology Center at the Frost School of Music, a naming gift for the L. Austin Weeks Center for Recording and Performance also at the Frost School, endowed scholarships at the School, the Lewis G. Weeks Chair in Geology at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, established by Marta in memory of her father-in law, the L. Austin Weeks Family Endowed Chair in Urologic Research at the Miller School of Medicine, generous support for tactual speech at the Mailman Center for Child Development, International Education and Exchange scholarships through the Division of Continuing and International Education, and the building fund for the M. Christine Schwartz Center for Nursing and Health Studies, among others.

Marta, Austin and their children came to Miami in 1967 during his employment as a geological oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Austin later began his own consulting business, became involved with Weeks Petroleum Ltd., a Bermuda-based company founded by his father, and passed away in February 2005.

It’s easy, rich kids: she inherited it.  (Looks like her husband did, too.)  Some things don’t change in the Episcopal Church.

If she really wants to do something worthwhile, she could work to send civil marriage to the bottom of the Straits of Florida, unlike her idiotic bishop who won’t afford “Christian” marriage to those who don’t want it from the state.

One side note: I did know a scion of the Lodge family (they make the cast iron cookware) who was an Episcopal minister, and a Charismatic one at that.  But he actually worked in the business as well.  The liberals then didn’t like charismatics, and they sure don’t like them now…

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Joyce Reingold at the Shiny Sheet assures us that it’s so:

But after a review of 2,000 AP news stories from the past year, it’s official: Florida is the weirdest news state of all.

In fact, not only was The Sunshine State the biggest source of strange news, it was the “runaway winner,” according to a press release from Tableseed.com, the company behind the study.

Here are some of the 169 headlines that helped Florida secure this honor:

• Man calls 911 after eatery runs out of lemonade — Boynton Beach
• Florida lotto winner seeks to open a nude dude ranch — Brooksville
• Dead shark left in Miami street after failed sale — Miami
• Man wearing sleeping bag as cape attempts robbery — Gainesville
• Man allegedly flings jellyfish at teens at beach — Madeira Beach

“Where the animals are tame and the people run wild” isn’t just my slogan any more.

Things are made worse by the fact that Drudge, who lives in Florida, gives preference to weird Florida news all of the time.  And that means that everybody knows the truth.

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It’s good news (hopefully) for at least some of these he cleaned out:

Auctioneers did better than expected during a sale of items that once belonged to Bernard and Ruth Madoff. The Saturday auction in New York, run by Gaston & Sheehan, netted $1 million for Madoff victims.

The auction is part of a series of sales of Madoff property. The Madoffs’ real estate properties in New York and Palm Beach remained on the market as of Nov. 11 and an auction will be held Tuesday in Fort Lauderdale.

Saturday’s sale included items from their homes that were seized by the U.S. Marshals Service. Among the items at auction were Bernard Madoff’s blue satin New York Mets jacket, which commanded $14,000; a Hofstra College ring, which fetched $6,000; his golf irons, which netted $3,600; and two pairs of Ruth Madoff’s diamond earrings, which were sold for $70,000 each.

If I had been in New York, I would have bid on his clubs and, assuming I was successful (unlikely at these prices,) I would have taken them home and played with them on my $18 green’s fee course. I’m sure the Shiny Sheet would have loved to have put a photo of this old Palm Beacher on a mangy golf course with Madoff’s clubs on the front page (LOL!)

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