Category Archives: Education

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

Of Ducks And Gays

30 Comments

…and tolerance:

The advantages of classical liberal market cosmopolitanism–the idea that it’s best to set aside peaceful differences of opinion and creed and worries about different races, nationalities, and genders when deciding how we interact with the world–has a great track record of making us all richer and happier.

The idea that that people should be punished with boycott or losing their jobs over having wrong beliefs hobbles the flowering of tolerant classical liberal market cosmopolitanism.

There may have been a good reason why classical tolerance of expression was summed up in the epigram: “I disagree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it!”

That has a different feel than: “I disagree with what you say, I think you are evil for having said it, I think no one should associate with you and you ought to lose your livelihood, and anyone who doesn’t agree with me about all that is skating on pretty thin ice as well, but hey, I don’t think you should be arrested for it.”

It’s a “heads I win tails you lose” situation, as it often is with the Left. As I noted at Twitter yesterday:

As I also noted there, declaring someone a sinner does not justify bullying or assaulting them. There will always be bullies, but their existence is not a reason to suppress freedom of expression or religion.

[Update a few minutes later]

Joel Achenbach has a pretty amusing take: The Ducksters are the Flintstones.

[Update a while later]

The show is likely to be canceled. I noted yesterday on Twitter that A&E needed Duck Dynasty a lot more than the latter needed A&E. A&E can run whatever programs it wants, but I think that they’ll realize that this was a stupid business decision.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Thoughts from Jonah: Real rednecks.

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

“This Is What Happens In Obama’s America”

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What happens in Obama’s America is that people think that it’s intrinsically racist to criticize the president. If that cartoon had been published six years ago, with “Obama’s” replaced by “Bush’s,” would it have been racist then? If not, what would be the difference, other than the melanin content of the two mens’ skin? The editor shouldn’t have apologized, or retracted. He should have called out the detractors as the racialist demagogues they are.

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

Ten Questions For Al Gore

11 Comments

…from a Canadian:

Earlier this year in an interview with the Globe and Mail you described Canada’s development of the oil sands as the equivalent of treating the atmosphere like an “open sewer.” What do you have to say about the findings of Canadian climate scientist and lead UN IPCC author Andrew Weaver, and his colleague Neal Swart, published in the journal Nature, that even if Canada developed all the commercially viable oil in the oilsands, global temperatures would rise by an insignificant 0.03 degrees?

It’s frightening how close this pompous hypocritical math-challenged fool came to being president.

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

Obama’s Learning Curve

14 Comments

I wouldn’t call it “slow.” It actually basically vertical:

The education President Obama received at Columbia University and Harvard Law School — and delivered to others as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School — encourages the fantasy of a political world subject to almost limitless manipulation by clever and well-orchestrated images. This explains why the harsh exigencies and intractable forces of politics keep stunning the president, each new time as if it were the very first.

How might higher education be reformed to produce political leaders more familiar with how the world really works, more alive to the realities of social and political life and better able to discuss them honestly with the American people?

He’s lived his entire life in a bubble of unreality. A lot of us realized this in 2008, but a few million too few.

Education, Science And Society

Bi-Lingual Brain Benefits

18 Comments

I’ve always regretted not being bi-lingual. I took Latin in high school, which has been enormously beneficial, but I never spoke it, and I’m really only monolingual. That’s sort of a natural advantage that kids of immigrants have. I don’t know if my half-Iraqi nephew and niece are fluent (they probably just know some words), but I’m sure they’re getting some benefit from hanging out with their mother’s family.

I’d also note, on the education bubble front, that eliminating the requirement of a language for a college degree was an early sign of it.