Thursday, September 9. 2021
Scientists Figured Out How And When Our Sun Will Die, And It's Going to Be Epic
Wednesday, September 8. 2021
Achievement gaps in kids have many causes which anybody can list. IQ is on the list, but not at the top although 50% of people have below average which could knock them out of the calculus game.
Personality traits, parental support, cultural ideals, cognitive issues, etc etc all play roles in how people do academically. And, of course, males do not do as well except at the top end.
At Quillette, Remedial Education for All. It's about "dumbing down."
As calls for equality of outcome gain steam and schools make plans to reduce educational gaps that have been exacerbated by 18 months of virtual learning, we’d do well to remember the predictable costs of pretending we can make everything fair. Mass education will never be a perfect fit for everyone. Schools have to identify the competencies and attitudes that are most valuable and optimize in a way that brings the most possible students to high, yet reachable standards. When high school students fall too far behind and decide they aren’t interested in catching up, they should be able to pursue a vocational track that pushes them to develop other meaningful skills. These students will be far more likely to apply themselves if we give them relevant options like work apprenticeships, trade programs, and so on.
Trades are not for low IQ. They are good for people who do not like regular school.
The Truth about Autogynephilia
After having spoken with many people, over decades, about their lives and sometimes their wildest sexual fantasies, I still find the gender identity issue sort of strange. I suppose I have heard it all, but have never seen a patient who was worried about their gender expression. I have seen plenty of gay men who were afraid to come out of the closet though. That was usually prompted by wives who wondered about their husbands' lack of sex drive.
Wild fantasies are normal, at least in people lacking in the usual sorts of repression of taboos. Perhaps the political climate is making way for the overcoming of sex and gender taboos.
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen
Plenty of readers might not approve of Woody Allen, but that quote certainly applies to my life trajectory. You meet people, some of them think you are neither stupid nor an ahole, and good things tend to happen.
Tuesday, September 7. 2021
Bari Weiss on back to school
Suzy Weiss on home schooling
Monday, September 6. 2021
I repost this about every four years. I think, a good reminder. Below is a repost of a column I wrote at another venue for Labor Day 2006 and posted again here in 2011 and 2014 and 2018:
What remains of Labor Day? Some speeches about the hard work of our parents or grandparents, and some newspaper articles about current difficulties getting established or obtaining benefits for today’s workers.
Conservatives are distinguished by particular respect for the hallowed history from which current and future advantages spring, without which we would be rootless and at the whim of passing fancies or incitements.
Supposedly, the virtues and rewards of hard work are among these cherished principles.
The Left trumpets redistributive schemes from the affluent or hard working to the poor or lazy, most of which have relatively little benefit to the poor but create newly enriched bureaucrats and union leaders.
Conservatives’ answer is usually more along the lines of how to preserve and protect the fruits of the labor by those in the middle and upper rungs of the economic ladder.
Sebastian Mallaby steps on the Left and Right’s toes today in the Washington Post.
Mallaby points out the futility of most of the Left’s prescriptions, to the “point the left begins to seethe.” He then focuses on reducing tax incentives that mostly accrue to the middle and upper classes, to free up a quarter of them for $180-billion that could be used for increased earned income credits and reduced regressive payroll taxes.
The problem with Mallaby’s arguments is that they are another, albeit better, form of redistribution, and government has repeatedly proven its penchant for wasting such billions on other than targeted needs. More necessary is the unbridling of energies and rewards for labor. That requires investment which creates demand for labor, and skills-oriented education that creates competitive wage earners to fill those new openings.
As Mallaby correctly argues, many of the poorest workers are in service trades not impacted by international competition. Such positions that were once beginning rungs on the ladder now face a gap of steps up due to lack of skills.
Instead of redistributing tax incentives, more needed is redistributing our already huge tax outlays on education from schemes that create administrative and union positions, and posh campuses, toward greater vocational and skills education.
That honors labor, by providing the tools for all to benefit from labor.
The evening of September 6, 2021 will launch the 5782th Jewish New Year.
The Hebrew word Rosh (ראש) means first/head/beginning and Hashanah (השנה) means the year. The root of the Hebrew word Shanah is both “repeat” and “change.” Rosh Hashanah constitutes an annual reminder of the need to enhance one’s behavior through a systematic study of moral values, learning from experience and avoiding past errors. Rosh Hashanah ushers-in the Ten Days of Repentance, which are concluded on Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).
Humility. Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the 6th day of Creation, when the first human-being, Adam, was created. Adam is the Hebrew word for a human-being (אדמ). Adam was created with humility before G-d. Adam strayed, the original sin, that we work to overcome with our learning the strength and humility to do what's right, regardless the temptation .
I think it’s very important that we think about what humility means and how we embody it as we walk into the High Holidays.
We are encouraged to enter humbly into the holidays as we stand before God and ourselves. But what does that mean?
It’s about dropping everything and anything that has to do with ego - pride, embarrassment, shame, jealousy, comparing myself to others and so much more. Humility is about standing in truth and that truth includes your strengths as well. It includes all of you. None of it is bad or good. But that truth reveals the parts of ourselves that may be getting in our own way. And we’re only able to see those things once we can humbly walk through them. And once we see them, well, that’s when the growth begins.
No one is watching your journey through the holidays. It is yours to have and experience. And it is between you, God (if God is a part of the equation for you), and yourself. Make the most of it.
Let’s walk humbly together into these coming days, vulnerable, open, and honest.
(I humbly borrowed most of the above from several wise ones.)
Reader sent us this info:
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Well, because that's the way they built them in England, and English engineers designed the first US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the wagon tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
So, why did 'they' use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break more often on some of the old, long distance roads in England . You see, that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And what about the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match or run the risk of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature, of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system, was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important? Ancient horse's asses control almost everything......
Sunday, September 5. 2021
China's Marxist "Profound Revolution" Is Here, And Nobody In The West Is Ready
Isaiah 35:4-7a
35:4 Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you."
35:5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
35:6 then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert;
35:7a the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.
Saturday, September 4. 2021
Reposting in case anybody missed it: The Social Science Monoculture Doubles Down
ET TU, PRINCETON?
WSJ: What 9/11 Taught Us About Trauma and Resilience. Distress is a normal reaction to mass tragedy, but so is a relatively prompt climb back to good mental health.
MC: The topic of the moment here at Manhattan Contrarian has been how judges with a religious zeal to perfect the world (according to their own woke vision) can go completely off the rails with sweeping orders to transform the entire country.
China Rebuffs Kerry In Climate Talks: 'We'll Follow Our Own Roadmap"
Joe Manchin Is Singlehandedly Destroying Biden's Presidency.
Friday, September 3. 2021
Jonathan Turley: Is Roe vs. Wade finished? The mainstream media just can't hold back: It is not the first time that actual orders or decisions seemed immaterial to the mainstream media's coverage (Whatever the ultimate outcome, it pays to know the facts.....unless facts interfere with bias.)
Thursday, September 2. 2021
The Social Science Monoculture Doubles Down
The overwhelmingly left/liberal professoriate has been looking for psychological defects in their political opponents for some time, but the intensity of these efforts has increased markedly in the last two decades. The literature is now replete with correlations linking conservatism with intolerance, prejudice, low intelligence, close-minded thinking styles, and just about any other undesirable cognitive and personality characteristic. But most of these relationships were attenuated or disappeared entirely when the ideological assumptions behind the research were examined more closely...
Related, The Breakdown of Objective Reality. A crisis of authority has left the public increasingly willing to believe implausible things.
The Internet, after all, is a playground of impossible fantasies. The digital self, as L.M. Sacassas has noted, is a featureless and colorless reproduction of an actual human being, intrinsically devoid of identity, so that, in principle, it is capable of becoming anyone or anything. The will to believe in a hidden prophet called “Q” is no more bizarre than the will to believe in a proliferating variety of “genders.” For those born with a smartphone in hand, the whole concept of reality, to the degree it exists, appears in the guise of a soft and pliable substance to be molded according to one’s dreams.
Stakeholder Capitalism Is a Trojan Horse for China: It may be good for companies Airbnb, Nike and Disney. But it's terrible for America.
This corporate hustle is the subject of a new, bestselling book called Woke Inc: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam by biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy makes the compelling case that “stakeholder capitalism” sounds like a good thing, but is in fact deeply damaging our democracy.
China may be the most prominent example of stakeholder capitalism gone awry, but it is hardly alone.
Any number of American corporations now lavishing untold sums of capital on diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives in the United States are eager to do business in countries with reprehensible human-rights records
..So persists an inescapable contradiction of stakeholder capitalism: All of these corporations have successfully rebranded themselves as good citizens, global stewards and combatants in the war against systemic racism, which has obviously proven good for business, but very bad for America, blurring the moral distinction between democracies and closed societies, between the free West and fear-based societies like China.
And because this business strategy is dressed in the garments of justice, it only compounds our innumerable confusions about what makes us us.
No, the Woke Won’t Debate You. Here’s Why.
Iran’s new approach to missile proliferation
Jewish Institute for Liberal Values: CRT and Antisemitism white paper (An important resource)
This article applies to heavy weight training, not for the hand-weights typically used in conditioning classes.
Age is a factor. Also, there is an amount which is optimal. More is not always better. I do heavy weights (powerlifts, etc) twice weekly, but have been slacking off on the nutrition.
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An 'Internet apocalypse'