Maggie's Farm

The worst thing about these f-ing errors is that one tends to discount everything else the person is writing. The thing is, they could have something smart to say but somehow missed class the day they reviewed The Common Writing Errors of People Who Did Not Pay Attention in 3rd Grade.

You know how it is. People with English accents sound smarter than what they are saying and, for many Yankees I am sad to say, people with Hillbilly accents sound dumber than what they are saying. Both of these biases, interestingly, can work to the advantage of the object of the bias.

A reader offered this comment: " I heard Prince Harry or William express appreciation of a gift given “to my brother and I”.  We’re doomed!"

Not from The Onion: She also worries that evaluations of math skills can perpetuate discrimination against minorities, especially if they do worse than their white counterparts.

Meanwhile no worries about Asians and people from India doing better, overall, than those white kids. I noted that she is not a Math Prof, but a Math Education Prof.  But still... 

From here:

 “What has happened is these young people now getting to college have no sense of history – of any kind! No sense of history. No world geography. No sense of the violence and the barbarities of history. So, they think that the whole world has always been like this, a kind of nice, comfortable world where you can go to the store and get orange juice and milk, and you can turn on the water and the hot water comes out. They have no sense whatever of the destruction, of the great civilizations that rose and fell, and so on – and how arrogant people get when they’re in a comfortable civilization. They now have been taught to look around them to see defects in America – which is the freest country in the history of the world – and to feel that somehow America is the source of all evil in the universe, and it’s because they’ve never been exposed to the actual evil of the history of humanity. They know nothing!”

This is a little dated, but worth it anyway

As the days grow shorter, my annual request that dawn, twilight, and night road walkers wear highly-visible or reflective clothing, or a reflector vest as in photo. Cheap, lightweight.  Wearing a light is good too. I suggest both.

I do not want to hit you, but I might get close if you walk on a roadside dressed in dark clothing. That would be a bad thing for you and me. Please do not make yourself invisible. I have come too close to night walkers.

Via Kling's Dealing with complex social problems

Crystal clear as only VDH can be. People are learning that, with Trump, you have to take the good with the occasional atrociousness. Best to ignore what he says, and just see what his admin. does.

By far the most difficult skill I learned as CEO was the ability to manage my own psychology.

Ben Horowitz, via Marginal Rev

I didn't know Tahiti was part of France. Never been to Tahiti, feel no desire to go. I am told the beaches are filthy with garbage, and I am not too fond of beaches anyway. 

"Worried that health care was too hostage to the vicissitudes of the markets, Democrats had instead made it the prisoner of politics."

That's from McArdle's post Obamacare Was Built With the Flaws Trump Now Exploits. If she had generalized the sentence, it would merit a QQQ.  Everything is "hostage to markets." Including politics.

A Landscape at Peace With Man and Nature.

We go for natural or naturalistic plantings around here. Just a couple of perennial borders that we supplement with annuals. The fewer gardens you have, the less work.

Our best naturalistic plantings are a meadow hillside full of daffodils. At some point, you can just mow it with the tractor.  We also have plenty of daylilies along walls. They make for an August delight. 

"Why do racial disparities persist in household income, job status, and incarceration rates, when explicit racism has, by all measures, greatly diminished over the last half-century?" 

Is "unconscious racial bias", in other words, unconscious racism, the main cause of racial disparities in the US?  I don't think so, not for even a minute.  The article notes that the research that supported the oppression theory is turning out to be invalid, but because of its political usefulness the idea will no doubt persist anyway.

There are many reasons for individuals to be socio-culturally, or otherwise, "disadvantaged."  There are many reasons for people to be stereotyped too. Everybody stereotypes until they know somebody. 

In my opinion, "unconscious bias" is akin to "microaggression" because at some point the pursuit of oppression becomes absurd.

I like to learn but I do not want to be taught.

Winston Churchill 

Along with the serious students who want to learn, and the wholesome non-serious students who want to drink and hook-up and go to the game,  there is always a group of self-important morons who want to make a splash and get in the news.  That is all to be expected.

I blame the spineless administrators who put up with this crap. Give those kids an inch and they'll take a mile, just like 2 year-olds. 

Are these people retarded, or insane?  Mizzou Just Never Learns

I suspect that they are just terminally, willingly, spinelessly naive. Willingly naive is a kind of denial of reality so it is not too far from insane. They will not admit to themselves that they are being played because that would expose their moral and spiritual frailty.  

The world, and academia, needs more Prof. Petersons and fewer profs and administrators who fold like a cheap camera, as they used to say.

THE ARTICLE THAT MADE 16,000 IDEOLOGUES GO WILD

The argument that introducing modern civilization to more primitive societies may have been more of a blessing than a curse in many cases seems to be One Of Those Things You Can Not Say. 

What would India be without the British Raj?  Well, hard to say, but debatable.

Peterson and Paglia. The whole thing is predictably entertaining, and Paglia is full of beans as always. They cover all sorts of topics.

John Leo: EIGHT IDEAS FORBIDDEN ON CAMPUS

It has become a Maoist subculture. I would not enjoy it.

Most of those seeking teaching careers end up as adjuncts, making peanuts and struggling to survive.  One wonders why they do not simply apply for high school jobs where they could get steady, well-paid useful work with benefits and can never be fired.

Today, getting tenure as a full professor is like making it to the NBA. 

One also wonders why our lefty universities treat these devoted slaves so poorly while hiring diversity administrators for $350,000/year.

Indeed, Frederic Bastiat was one of those geniuses of common sense. 

What is the source of Bastiat’s genius? Arguably it is that he analyzes all things economic through the eyes of the individual. Economies aren’t living, breathing blobs; they’re just collections of individuals. And for an individual, “It is only too obvious that abundance would be advantageous to him.” As individuals, we’re all too aware of how few of life’s necessities or luxuries we could produce on our own. And if imports are wondrous for the individual (whether from across the street, or the other side of the world), which they are, they’re wondrous for an economy that is merely a collection of individuals.

 From a brief history of retirement:

As factories began to replace farms in economic importance, skeptics wondered whether old folks could understand and work with the new machines. One of the giants of American medicine, Johns Hopkins Hospital co-founder William Osler, in 1905 decried the “uselessness” of men older than 60 and said they should leave the workforce.

Growing prosperity also meant more people could afford to stop working late in life...