Category Archives: Education
The Psychology Field
It has a political diversity problem.
Leftists worship “diversity,” as long as it involves skin color and gender, not opinion.
The Hugo Wars
On the sad state of science fiction:
Wherever they emerge, social-justice warriors claim to be champions of diversity. But they always reveal themselves to be relentlessly hostile to it: they applaud people of different genders, races, and cultures just so long as those people all think the same way. Theirs is a diversity of the trivial; a diversity of skin-deep, ephemeral affiliations.
This is one of the reasons I haven’t read as much as I did when I was younger. And sadly, the situation is similar on many college campuses.
Grubby Jobs
Every teenager should work one.
Yup. I was a service-station attendant/mechanic (among other things). Between all the work rules and minimum wage, a lot of teens aren’t getting started on the first rung of the employment ladder. They’re not being properly taught in school, and they’re not being allowed to learn in the school of hard knocks. This won’t end well.
[Update a while later]
As noted in comments, working jobs like that teaches you the value of an education. I wasn’t that motivated about college after high school until I had a job as a VW mechanic at the local dealership, then got laid off in the recession of 1973 (it was a recession for the country, it was a depression for Flint and Detroit). I went to community college, took pre-engineering courses, then transferred them to Ann Arbor a couple years later.
The Civil War Over Political Correctness
Jonathan Chait has kicked one off within the Left.
Good. These people view the world as a re-education camp, with them as the instructors. And guards.
[Update a while later]
A few observations from a “mansplainer.”
[Saturday-morning update]
“The obvious thing to say about Jonathan Chait’s war against the Left is that we are rooting for casualities.” Yup.
Obama’s Ongoing War On The Middle Class
His latest energy-tapping battle, abandoned.
Women Are Helpless Victims
Free Speech On Campus
…and the culture war. As Glenn notes, Brandeis charges $60,000 a year to live in an environment like that.
The Cultural Civil War
They’re starting to fracture from their own internal contradictions.
Climate Reporting
It’s a hot mess.
[Late-morning update]
A media round up, and some thoughts, from Judith Curry, on the State of the Union:
what is wrong with President Obama’s statements as cited above?
- His statement about humans having exacerbated extreme weather events is not supported by the IPCC
- The Pentagon is confusing climate change with extreme weather (see above)
- ‘Climate change is real’ is almost a tautology; climate has always changed and always will, independently of anything humans do.
- His tweet about ‘97%’ is based on an erroneous and discredited paper [link]
As for ‘Denial from Congress is dangerous’, I doubt that anyone in Congress denies that climate changes. The issue of ‘dangerous’ is a hypothetical, and relates to values (not science).
And speaking of the ‘deniers’ in Congress, did anyone spot any errors in the actual science from Senator Inhofe’s rebuttal?
The apparent ‘contract’ between Obama and his administrators to play politics with climate science seems to be a recipe for anti science and premature policies with negative economic consequences that have little to no impact on the climate.
BUt the important thing is that they line the pockets of his campaign contributors.
Maybe some day, in a future administration, we can have a grown up conversation about climate change (natural and human caused), the potential risks, and a broad range of policy responses.
Let’s hope.