Maggie's Farm

Meet the ‘Blue Collar Ivies’

From EBT recipients stole food this weekend (and every other weekend) (h/t Vanderleun):

Middle class families are forced to watch as food is taken from the mouths of their children and given to others, in an elaborate political scheme to breed dependence and ensure a loyal voting base. If we’re OK with that, why shouldn’t we be OK with what happened at a few Walmarts this past weekend? Sure, YOU can’t walk into your local supermarket and take things off the shelves, but YOU aren’t entitled. Only certain people are entitled, and the government decides who those people are. Don’t you get it?

also

I’d like to at least believe that our tolerance for Welfare stems from some sort of charitable feeling. That still wouldn’t make it right, but it would make it perhaps more palatable. Yet, I know this isn’t the case. I believe strongly in giving to the poor, and my wife and I do just that. Anyone who wants to GIVE, and GIVE FREELY, is more than able to do so. It doesn’t, therefore, make sense to support the Nanny State simply because you wish to help the poor. You could help the poor without the government, and you know it.

On the contrary, I think most of us submit to and accept Entitlements because we lack the moral or mental energy to oppose them.

The UK and Scandinavia are reforming the living on the dole lifestyle

From the article by Ron Paul:

The goal of academic regulation is to limit the supply of schools that compete against public schools. This is done in the name of guaranteeing the educational quality of the school, thereby protecting the students. Yet the academic performance of the public schools continues to decline, and has done so since the early 1960s. The scores on the SAT and ACT exams continue to fall. The high point was in the early 1960s. So, regulation has not been successful in guaranteeing the quality of education. But it has been quite successful in restricting entry into the field of education.

From TED talks are lying to you - The creative class has never been more
screwed. Books about creativity have never been more popular. What
gives?

 When he considered his creative friends as individuals, the literature of creativity began to seem even worse — more like a straight-up insult. Our writer-to-be was old enough to know that, for all its reverential talk about the rebel and the box breaker, society had no interest in new ideas at all unless they reinforced favorite theories or could be monetized in some obvious way. The method of every triumphant intellectual movement had been to quash dissent and cordon off truly inventive voices. This was simply how debate was conducted. Authors rejoiced at the discrediting of their rivals (as poor Jonah Lehrer would find in 2012). Academic professions excluded those who didn’t toe the party line. Leftist cliques excommunicated one another.

Financial Planning for the Non-Retiree

The laws are complicated, but few really want to retire at 66 or 67 anymore.

Prof. Lee Smolin has doubts: Think About Nature.

The problem that I've identified—that I think is at the root of a lot of the spinning of our wheels and confusion of contemporary physics and cosmology—is that you can't just take this method of doing science and scale it up to the universe as a whole. When you do, you run into questions that you can't answer. You end up with fallacies; you end up saying silly things. One reason is that, on a cosmological scale, the questions that we want to understand are not just what are the laws, but why are these the laws rather than other laws? Where do the laws come from? What makes the laws what they are? And if the laws are input to the method, the method will never explain the laws because they're input.

Mitford didn’t think her book would fly off the shelves, but her publishers suspected they were sitting on a bombshell.

Mitford may have been a nutjob, but I tend to believe that the way we deal with the dead (and the dying) in America is close to insane. Death is just a routine part of living, is it not? Loss is terrible, for sure, but we must adjust to it as we all grow older.The deaths of friends, family, and, finally, of ourselves.

What do you want to be done with your mortal remains, and at what expense? Do you even care?

They are confused about what to do about sex, Obsessed with it. Clearly, homosexuality is nurtured, but what about heterosexual interests?

 “We are working with the fraternity on a multifaceted remedy that will require training and other measures be successfully completed before the fraternity can resume its recruitment efforts or host social events to ensure that our values are upheld, and that such a situation will not recur,” Liliana Rodriguez, associate dean at Swarthmore, told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

"Their values"? This is the college with a co-ed nude masturbation club. That's higher ed in the USA. However, the "training and other measures" sounds like S & M fun. I think this lady dean has whips in her closet. That sounds more exciting than Physical Chemistry but perhaps at Swarthmore they might find a way to call it physical chemistry.

You know that painting. I don't need to tell you or any Swarthmore kid.

"Gilmour’s off-hand statements highlighted not misogynist tyranny but the
lockdown by academic feminism on even the most flippant and marginal
deviations from the correct line."

Having lost faith in the discipline they are (over) paid to teach, literature instructors have enthusiastically embraced their roles as the guardians of progressive pieties about women and the Chinese.

This is not to suggest that Gilmour himself is any kind of resistance hero. He has long since apologized for his remarks and will almost certainly never make any such again.

Mau-mauing works. Even tough guys like male profs of literature are intimidated.

Why tough teachers get good results and why it’s time to revive old-fashioned education.

Ditto to that.

Scalia had some fun being interviewed by Jennifer Senior. 

He toys with her naivete a bit, but all in good fun. Who knew he was a hunter and a poker player?

Opt-Out of Common Core? Great! - But Let's Opt-Out of All Government Programs

I am reflexively skeptical about anything titled "common," and I do not know what the federal government is doing by getting involved in local education. What I do know is that many people would opt out of many government things if given free choice.

For one hot example, how many would like to opt out of Obamacare? Who wants all of that "insurance coverage"? It's not even really insurance anyway. It covers hangnails, the flu, birth control pills and even pregnancy (why should I pay for your pregnancy if I don't want to? It's elective, and none of my business). It's a pre-paid communal medical treatment plan, and I want nothing to do with it.

Not exactly. It's complicated.

The article has a good summary of the history of elite college discrimination.

Sol Stern explains education wonk Ravitch's dramatic change of heart.

Now she thinks school choice is a capitalist plot.

Yale Prof and Maggie's hero David Gelernter: Back To School - A reclamation project for higher ed.

He wants more conservatives involved with higher ed, but nobody even knows what higher ed means anymore, much less a Yale prof. It can mean anything, but most of what it can mean nowadays is a lot of money for a useless piece of paper.

Possibly not, but he's very good at selling books. He seems likeable enough, though.

Just back from an extra-long weekend around my old haunts in Oxford (UK). Same old, same old, and tourist-free in September.

But here in the USA, we have New! Improved! Education’s shiny toy syndrome.

A while ago, I mentioned how my math education was almost destroyed by New Math. Even my math teachers didn't get the point of it even though they were required to teach it. Base Nine. Base 11?  WTF? I am not an Einstein and do not need my math deconstructed. Base 10 is plenty enough to keep my brain challenged.

Once I recovered from the now-discarded New Math (it took me 3 years), I was fine. One regret I have with my career, among others, is that it does not require any sophisticated math. I still believe that the Calculus is a beautiful gift from God and the real shiny toy of education.

And statistics remain a perfect tool to fool juries with no math knowledge.

The article is here.

My guess that the decline in the average is due to more "unprepared" kids taking the exam, dragging the average down.

Most of us are muppets, are we not? Investing is gambling, is it not?

Asset Allocation for Muppets

Cash registers were invented to prevent stealing by store clerks. James Ritty invented it in 1884. They were not mainly adding machines, but registers of sales so the owner could keep track of what was going on. In those days, any clerk could add quickly anyway. Paper receipts were a later improvement.

They were complex mechanical machines (still are, but not mechanical). The old National Cash Register Co. (NCR) is still in business. IBM's Tom Watson started out there.

I spent a few minutes trying to find out how they were designed, but gave up. The Wiki entry is quite lame. Disappointing.

The days of the ka-ching are long gone. The purpose of the ka-ching noise was to let the owner or manager know that a sale had taken place.

"Say it with roses, say it with mink, but never, ever say it in ink."

Advice from the Maggie's Farm attorney: Never put it in writing. Never. Whatever it is, unless it's a contract. Just discuss it on the phone.

Everyone Should Teach 'Freshman Comp'

Teaching it can help your own writing.