And when it’s all over, they aren’t really educated — they’re just credentialed.
Category Archives: Education
Karl Marx
The New York Times discovers that he was as terrible a person as many (most?) of his acolytes.
California Dreaming
Ah, the utopian fantasies of the loony left:
Fittingly, the same day Egan’s hymn was published, the California State Auditor reported the state’s net worth – its assets minus its liabilities – at negative $127.2 billion. Also reported were $167.9 billion in long-term obligations, not including $60 billion in unfunded liabilities for retiree health care, or those for state employees’ future pensions. These are not just “bills.” These are benefits for public employees and services for the poor that won’t be delivered as promised.
California’s public school system, both one of the most expensive and one of the poorest performing in the country, is not improving. The state’s prison system is both so overcrowded and underfunded that the US Supreme Court deemed conditions “cruel and unusual punishment.” And despite 9.8 percent unemployment (tied for highest in the country), tax, regulatory, and zoning policies make blue-collar job creation in manufacturing and real estate development next to impossible.
But other than that, things are great.
Egan and other turquoise dreamers seem to look at tenured teachers, happy prison guards, and fleeced one-percenters and believe conditions are promising enough to move on to romantic dreams of the future. Over the heads of undereducated kids, the chronically unemployed, and the poor, they see a high-speed train zooming along the sparkling coast. This is not how progressives used to think.
What constitutes actual “progress” is, of course, subjective.
EBooks
…are very different from print books.
[Update a while later]
Sorry, I’ve solved the mystery of the missing link.
The Economist’s Climate Alarmism
Thoughts on their backing off:
…in January, they gave up on the global climate treaty approach, and are now acknowledging the many nuances inherent to climate modeling. This is a sign that the global intellectual and political establishment is gradually distancing itself from the climate radicals and taking a more thoughtful and balanced approach. We also hope it’s a sign that they’re beginning to realize a more fundamental truth about the politics of climate change: that green hysteria and doom-mongering are leading causes of climate skepticism.
I’ve always been appropriately skeptical about the modeling:
I guess I am a denier. Here’s what I deny.
I deny that science is a compendium of knowledge to be ladled out to school children like government-approved pablum (and particularly malnutritious pablum), rather than a systematic method of attaining such knowledge.
I deny that skepticism about anthropogenic climate change is epistemologically equivalent to skepticism about evolution, and I resent the implications that if one is skeptical about the former, one must be similarly skeptical about the latter, and “anti-science.”
As someone who has done complex modeling and computer coding myself, I deny that we understand the complex and chaotic interactions of the atmosphere, oceans and solar and other inputs sufficiently to model them with any confidence into the future, and I deny that it is unreasonable and unscientific to think that those who believe they do have such understanding suffer from hubris. To paraphrase Carl Sagan, extraordinary policy prescriptions require extraordinary evidence.
The world seems to be catching up to me.
The Low-Info Hipster Morons Who Voted For Obama
…learn that elections have consequences:
That mean old company won’t throw extra cash at them so that they can live the New York City lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed! Dear Dudes: Companies are in business to stay in business and employ people. Obamacare regulations are making that increasingly more difficult; the costs are staggering and burdensome. That whole “you can keep your plan” deal? Obama lied.
And anyone with half a brain would have known that. But they’re products of the public educational system, and universities.
“Progressive” Education
Has it turned us into a nation of obedient sheep?
That was the goal, of course. Obedient sheep, many of whom can’t even read and write. But they vote.
A Whistle-Blowing Scientist
The lawsuit filing provides a troubling description of how fraud was used to impose draconian environmental regulations on California enterprises, which is one of the many reasons why California is deemed by CEOs nationwide as the “worst place to do business”.
As he notes, “liberals” only like whistleblowers when they blow the whistle on conservatives.
Intellectual Apostasy
…and its perils.
My respect for Steven Pinker has declined as a result of this episode.
“Let’s Get Yellow Stars For The Jews, Too”
You know, we’re always being told by the Left that blacks can’t be racist, because only people with power can be racist. Well, it sure seems to me like these folks have plenty of power. And to note a continuing theme, sending kids to a public school is more and more becoming parental malpractice.