Category Archives: Education

Business, Economics, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Today’s EPA Hearing On The Hill

I listened to some of it. Here is Judith Curry’s prepared testimony, and here are Moynihan’s live tweets.

The Democrats were sufficiently unhappy that they abandoned the hearing before it was over. They can’t handle the truth.

[Update in the afternoon]

Before he walked out, Professor Curry assisted one of the Democrats in beclowning himself.

[Update a few minutes later]

Post-hearing thoughts from her. I agree that the economist’s testimony was valuable, too. They basically told the Democrats that what the EPA plans to do would hit the poor hardest. Which is absolutely true.

Business, Education, Health, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Tech Titans And Life Extension

10 Comments

Here’s a good overview of what Google, Thiel and others are doing. I wish they’d stop calling it “immortality,” though. That’s not the goal, and if it were, it would be unrealistic. It’s just indefinite lifespan. As I often notes, expansion into space and extended lifespan go hand in hand.

[Update a while later]

Sorry, link was missing. Fixed now.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

Campus Rape

1 Comment

Some thoughts on the increasingly insane environment on college campuses, and witch hunts in the media.

[Update a few minutes later]

“http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/09/to-lie-about-rape-is-to-enable-evil/”:

To lie about rape is to enable evil. There is no polite way around that fact. It’s not the job of survivors to package rape into a neat media package for liberals and conservatives to eviscerate each other with.

The terror clings to you. Facing it, reporting it, enduring the medical exams and procedures, and following the judicial process is unimaginably difficult. What Rolling Stone did was provide an assist to perpetrators, robbing survivors of credibility. It’s unconscionable. It degrades our shared existence as Americans.

They don’t care.

Business, Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The Infantilization Of College Students

3 Comments

Even the Left is getting frightened of the brown-shirted monster they’ve created. I find it interesting that this professor has such a lack of self awareness:

Personally, liberal students scare the shit out of me. I know how to get conservative students to question their beliefs and confront awful truths, and I know that, should one of these conservative students make a facebook page calling me a communist or else seek to formally protest my liberal lies, the university would have my back. I would not get fired for pissing off a Republican, so long as I did so respectfully, and so long as it happened in the course of legitimate classroom instruction.

The same cannot be said of liberal students. All it takes is one slip—not even an outright challenging of their beliefs, but even momentarily exposing them to any uncomfortable thought or imagery—and that’s it, your classroom is triggering, you are insensitive, kids are bringing mattresses to your office hours and there’s a twitter petition out demanding you chop off your hand in repentance.

He keeps using that word “liberal.” I don’t think it means what he thinks it means.

[Update early afternoon]

The wrong time to coddle:

Between the infantilizing of campus culture and the growing global harshness, something has to give and—hint, hint—it won’t be the real world. The worst thing about the current climate of PC stupidity and mandatory cocooning on campus isn’t the ugly repression it entails. The destruction of free speech and free debate in the institutions that ought to be the citadels of intellectual liberty is a terrible thing and a horrible betrayal of everything universities are supposed to be about. But there is yet a worse consequence: the catastrophic dumbing down and weakening of a younger generation that is becoming too fragile and precious to exist in the current world—much less to fight the real evils and dangers that are growing.

These are the great-grandchildren of The Greatest Generation, corrupted by that generation’s children in the academy and public schools. How we have fallen.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

More Free Speech Problems

3 Comments

Though, actually, it sounds like this kid is kind of a nutcase.

[Friday-morning update]

This seems related somehow:

These little Junior Anti-Sex League members combine thuggishness and fragility in a particularly obnoxious way. They should be sent home until they are mature enough for college. And America. And no parent should pay tuition to a school that takes this sort of hysterical behavior seriously.

Higher ed (as well as public ed) is an effing mess.

[Bumped]

Business, Education, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Social Commentary, Technology and Society

Climate Activists

6 Comments

You people lost the scientific argument. Get over it:

Essex said that there seems to be a cultural shift and that scientific arguments have deteriorated. Individuals in society have moved away from “civilized dialogues in which people have a collegial attitude and work together to try to find the truth.” Essex characterized the pro-climate change philosophy as a form of sophistry, catering to popular opinion rather than being concerned with the truth.

You don’t say.