Maggie's Farm

Thinking by post: Isaiah Berlin's letters reveal how his ideas still hold relevance - One of the great liberal thinkers of the post-war period, Affirming: Letters 1975-97 makes clear the continuing relevance of Berlin's thought.

Berlin is an inspiration.

The social justice warriors (known now as SJW) have a big problem with how you think and how you talk. Even one or two of them can express "outrage" or feign feeling traumatized, and then you become controversial in the press.

It should all be funny, but it's not funny because you could lose your job. Freedom of speech does not protect your job - even in academia. People tiptoe around the office as if in an Orwellian world, and nobody says what they really think.

So my query to readers is this: What are the thought crimes today which could get you in trouble?

Science, policy, and politics necessarily makes for a messy combination. Theories and factual claims are generally tentative.

However, scientists are human, live in a given culture of knowledge and assumptions, and become attached to their ideas. Nobody wants to see his pet theory, worked on for 15 years, blown away by fresh data.

Science Is Neither 'Settled' Nor 'Skeptical'

The American death tax is a terrible thing. It doesn't apply to most working class people who slide their possessions past the tax man - and the very wealthy avoid it, but it kills families with savings, large farms or family businesses which have appreciated over time. For a recent example of how the wealthy deal with it, Estate Taxes And the (Clinton) Family Business.

One might think that American policy-makers would want more independent families, building up businesses and assets, but no. Only the filthy rich can afford to do that.  Death tax drives Dems to dementia

McArdle: What We're Buying With $1 Trillion in Student Loans

Who is "we", Kemosabe?  Oh, it's me. I have no problem with loans for cars, houses, boats, school, or anything else. Government-subsidized loans? No. Not necessary and distorts the price structure the same way mortgage interest deductions do.

If you love the ocean, and if you like good deals, Holland-America offers deals on their repositioning voyages. I highly recommend the trans-Atlantic. Spend 2 days in London or Paris, and then fly home.  It's all about being at sea, watching the ocean and the birds and the whales, and being served hot drinks on the deck chairs. Repositioning Cruises

Also, very good deals with very good service via Travel with Alan

Also, large discounts from the best hotels: Amoma.com

(You also can use Trivago.com, which will display Amoma results.)

See this video?

Not from the Onion, but from Veritas. Sheesh. Maybe they should hand out those smart pills, because the Stupid Pills are not doing any good.

Did time begin at that instant, so that there was no time or space "before"?  Or are space and time human constructs? Of course they are. Humans have been making up our understanding of the universe forever. We are wired to do that although we know that it is all beyond our comprehension and our feeble animal senses.

Good fun to contemplate, especially with medical marijuana:  Video discussion at Aeon.

Vedder: Seven Ways the Department of Education Has Made Higher Ed Worse

It has no reason to exist.

There are so many valid critiques of humanties curricula these days that it's hard to summarize them. Here's one effort: The Humanities Man the Barricades Against Growing Criticism.

One thing that stood out to me was the arrogance of the academics quoted. Like this:

Panelists spoke passionately and knowingly about the ability of art and literature to increase empathy and human understanding and to improve students’ critical thinking and writing skills. “From my experience, it is not possible to develop those skills without a liberal arts education,” said UNC system president Thomas Ross.

I think Herman Melvlle, Mark Twain, and even Bob Dylan might dispute that.

I taught at a New York City charter, upstairs from a school where the neglect of students is tragic.

(WSJ paywall)

Preschool, aka Nursery School, is glorified child care. Nothing wrong with it, nothing wonderful about it either. Hanging out around the olde cabin is good too.

Expectations of sustained effects from scaled up pre-K: Challenges from the Tennessee study

Preschool Helps Kids. Sometimes. Briefly.

A free ad for Flexjobs.com

Politically correct culture presents four problems for writers and artists...

The solution is to be unintimidated.

Barnett, via George Will:

 “The judicial passivism of the Supreme Court has combined with the activism of both Congresses and presidents to produce a behemoth federal government, which seemingly renders the actual Constitution a mere relic, rather than the governing document it purports to be.”

American governments of all flavors hate the Constitution because its purpose is to restrain government power. This is what was meant to be unique about America and the idea for which much blood has been shed.

If anybody wants or expects anything from government other than defense, border maintenance, and basic law, they have a slave or serf mentality and just do not get the American Idea. I am a patriot dinosaur, obsolete in today's gimme, decadent world.

From your lips to God's ears, Bird Dog. Calvinist tradition. Just pick your preferred combination of the list. A nap by the pool with a whiskey and a smoke must be ok sometimes, though:

"Life in America, where all citizens strive constantly for physical, moral, spiritual, intellectual, relational, artistic, and financial improvement and uplift! What else is there to do?"

Not really. No doubt these agencies and people hope to do good, but they view "poverty" through Western, materialist eyes. Many people do not know that they are poor and deprived until Westerners tell them that they are because they lack refrigerators and large-screen TVs . (See Eskimos as a case in point.)

I am not talking about famine and the like, just about normal times in subsistence pre-industrial areas with pre-industrial societies. Isn't there a condescending assumption that these brown people cannot figure out their lives by themselves? Why do Westerners wish to intrude on these peoples' lives and cultures? I suppose the Asians and Westerners have done so already through our desire for their natural resources, though, especially in Africa.

What would happen if the aid industry started collecting data on how the people it serves actually feel about their lives?

The classic Heinlein on material poverty:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.”

Robert A. Heinlein

Political Activism Comes to the American Conservatory

Excellence, like basketball, is not equal. That's the problem, besides that excellence is extremely difficult and requires sacrifice.

Emerges from retirement just to remind us how baseball writing is done: Wild North. I always felt that reading Angell was more fun than watching a game on TV.

From the report:

ACTA says in a press release today that only 24 schools out of 1,100 examined received its “A” grade. Their graduation requirements include at least six of seven subjects that are essential to a liberal arts education: literature, composition, economics, math, intermediate-level foreign language, science and American government/history.