Stuff I've Been Reading - December 8

Okay, maybe this is going to be just Stuff I've Been Reading, since I can't seem to stick to a weekly posting habit.  

Harvard Admits That Grades Have Lost Their Meaning — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal  I saw the one student saying that because Harvard had so many bright students, large numbers of A-grades should not be surprising.  She misses the point and arguably demonstrates that she does NOT belong at an elite school.  An Ivy League grade of A should be significant, not de rigeur.  Of course, Ivy League education isn't all that elite any more, but more of a marker for right-think/right-speak and right-social-cues.  

Read the conservative op-ed the Texas A&M student paper refused to publish | The College Fix  You don't have to agree with it, though I think the author makes some good points.  The journalism students at A&M are demonstrating that the board made a poor decision in resurrecting the journalism program. If the media doesn't get over this idea that they are the Cool Kids Club, they will eventually be pantsed by the jocks (figuratively speaking).  

Students Line Up to Listen to Anti-Socialist Speaker on Campus - YouTube  Okay, I was watching this and not reading it.  Some of these folks are realizing that there are reasons why so many people want to be IN the United States, and only a very few (very wealthy, very entitled) individuals are trying to get OUT --and remarkably, they are reasonably free to do so (although I suspect they will be very unhappy to learn that the IRS considers them taxpayers for the next decade at least).

Smart cities will kill freedom - UnHerd  There's a lot to unpack here, so get ready for a bit of a longer read.  If only the planners could just know more, then THIS time they'll get it right...

The Evils of Capitalism › American Greatness  Historians tend to know bunk about economics.  Many of my colleagues took Piketty quite seriously.  The entire "robber baron" line was basically started by a socialist grad student in the Thirties. And on and on and on.  Oh well.  Those who do not learn, must feel...

The New Definition of Blackness: When Race Stops Meaning Race – PJ Media  Now this is a fun one.  Race is such a fraught issue that no one can be honest with anyone about it, even amongst "each other."  Groupthink is powerful.  Pray us all that we can break this ideological linkage, on all sides.  Identity politics leads to tribalism.  Down that road lies madness.

Why America Is a ‘Creedal Nation’ - WSJ  Gordon Woods, y'all!!!  If we are not creedal, then we become tribal.

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself - Current Affairs  And this one depressed me.  A lot.  If we're going to just throw up the white flag on this (I'm looking at YOU, Ohio State) then I say let the Orange Man kill ALL higher ed funding, and let schools return to their ancient roots of learning.  Hell, I'll even go back to oral exams!  If the students don't do any thinking, they deserve whatever befalls them.  

Stuff I Read This Week - November 16

• Math teacher says he was called ‘ideologically violent’ for supporting standardized testing | The College Fix  Okay, folks, this labeling of non-supported speech as "violence" really needs to stop.  




• Why Male Teachers Left Elementary Schools And Won't Go Back | The Federalist  K-12 is a zone where men are increasingly left to specific segregated spaces.  I have a whole long argument here about how this carries all the way into higher ed, but I'll save that for another time.




• Peer Review Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. — The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal  If academia remains the "cool kids club" for a certain group, it will be ultimately destroyed and replaced with something else.  No one wants that, not even me.




• Palantir says college is no longer a reliable training ground—so it hired 22 high school students instead: ‘Skip the debt. Skip the indoctrination.’  What did I just tell you?  




• The Election of Mamdani: What It Means – And What It Doesn’t Mean | Mises Institute  It's easy to play politics.  It's hard to govern.  Also, those who do not learn must feel...




• Yes, Heather Cox Richardson Is Economically Illiterate – And Proud of It | Mises Institute  Please don't get me started with how historians believe they actually know about economics.   The economists often just give them the same look of exasperated bemusement as Sheldon Cooper was wont to give his associates.

Stuff I Read This Week - November 2

 Another round of off-the-clock opinions.  Your agreement is voluntary; your civility is not.

• Failing cities like Chicago should heed Ken Griffin’s warning: No tax base, no money (The Hill)  --welcome to Texas, be prepared to pay out the wazoo in property taxes, especially if you bring previous preferences for high-tax services with you. 

• The Coming AI Cataclysm (Compact Magazine) There's a lot here to unpack, but pay attention to where it talks about K-12 students and what I call the Value-Added of the Human Touch.

• The Appeal of the Campus Right (The Atlantic) I kept telling people even Way Back When that Trump was a symptom, not a cause.  Those who do not learn, must feel...

• Why I no longer engage with Nature publishing group (Heterodox STEM) I have also been musing for years about Lysenkoism, in more than one field.

• ‘We’re coming after you’ — how the left found peace through hate (The Hill) I have had to cut some people loose, including someone who was dear to me, because this sickness infected their souls.

• And the specific issue that got the person cut loose? Rethinking How We Misthink the Holocaust (Elder's Substack).  "Fine, if I'm going to be compared to Hamas when I criticize the Jews, then I hate all Jews.  They should hit the showers!" And those were some of the last words I heard that person speak.  

• "Why I reject 'No Enemies to the Right.' " (National Review) Sickness can spread, and we must guard against being the very thing we condemn.

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Stuff I Read This Week: October 19

So here are a few of the things I've been reading all week:

• The great ‘far right’ myth  (The Conservative Woman) I remember reading back a very long time ago by some French scholar studying the Thirties about the far left and far right reaching out at the extremes...

• Stop Meeting Students Where They Are (The Martin Center) We've been fighting this fight against lower standards for years.  Alas, the people who believe only in boosting enrollments are the ones who end up being promoted to leadership positions.  

• Texas woman shares why she chose community college certification over NYU master's (Hindustan Times)  Yep, we're a bargain and a better investment!

• Sarbanes-Oxley Promised To Protect Investors. It Ended Up Freezing Them Out.  (Reason Magazine)Oh my goodness me, the Mrs. had thoughts on this back in the day when she still did this for a living. I do know that IPOs ain't what they use-ta be...

• War is a Young Man’s Game (Real Clear Defense) Much of the snarking I heard from the Left on this came from people without military experience.  Given the record of the last fifteen years or so, I'd say the flag ranks were due a good winnowing. 

• Walmart, Once a Byword for Low Pay, Becomes a Case Study in How to Treat Workers (Wall Street Journal) This is an intriguing proposition, and I want to see the full Harvard Business Review piece when it comes out.  But this reporter is one of the reasons why WSJ is in decline.  She clearly is advocating for higher wages, yet her piece says next to nothing about causal links, as if we were to accept a potential post-hoc fallacy on its face as valid.  This is just sloppy.  That being said, the premise of well-paid workers being happier and more productive isn't exactly a new thesis.
• Will To Power (Claremont Review) Ideology cannot substitute for reality. But for the Left, it just might.

Yeah, off the clock I get to post things like this.`

Stuff I Read During The Week (Oct 12)

No, I'm not going to do daily links and such here.  That's too much work, plus there are questions about time/manner/place and the use of state equipment, etc.  Easier instead to start bookmarking links and posting them en masse once a week, usually on Sundays. Next week there will be more, but here's a small sampling:

• By removing common biases, study debunks U-shaped happiness curve with age.  Mind you, I have been reading Cicero's work on aging lately; he might have much to add here.

• California's Fast Food Minimum Wage Hike Cost the State 18,000 Jobs. That Shouldn't Surprise Anyone.  The true minimum wage is always zero.

Me? Canceled? HA!

Goodness me, it's been a minute, hasn't it?

So yes, I'm still around.  There was (and is) so much commentary going on out there that I was content to let others carry the load.  Plus, more people wanted to see BAH GAWD! on Rhymes-with-Chase-Took (Pippin's handsome cousin) than having to navigate here.  

But there are things that still need saying, from time to time, and they will be said.  For instance, someone noticed that I have been cutting friends away for the last several years.  Could this be true??? 

Yes.

Here's what it means: I'm old, I'm irascible, I'm mean, and I have decided that I want to be around people who help me self-mitigate.  No, I'm not building an echo chamber, far from it.  Yet I cannot ignore when some people become toxic.  A sickness infects their souls, and I have neither power to heal nor to grant absolution.   And yes, it's sad.  But am I going to be drawn further into their miasmas?  No.  Their paths and mine will diverge.

Hate my politics?  Go ahead.  

Call me an idiot?  Unlikely, my IQ is probably at least a standard deviation higher than yours. 

Wish harm on me, my family, or people I like?  Pray you well to what god(s) you hold dear to protect you.  I swore an oath the last time someone tried to actually harm my family that they would not see vengeance from me, and I have upheld that oath from that day till this one.  I will not swear to another such oath.