Thursday, July 14. 2016
There have always been natural meritocracies of talent and skill. In the Western world, the idea of meritocracy has been a conscious push-back against aristocracy, inheritance, class, prejudice, and patronage.
These days, some complain that meritocracy is a cover for sexism and racism. The history: The New Ruling Class. A quote:
...Peter is not at St. Paul’s because his parents went to Harvard; as he makes clear to Khan, he is there because of his hard work and academic achievement. Here we have the meritocratic delusion most in need of smashing: the notion that the people who make up our elite are especially smart. They are not—and I do not mean that in the feel-good democratic sense that we are all smart in our own ways, the homely-wise farmer no less than the scholar. I mean that the majority of meritocrats are, on their own chosen scale of intelligence, pretty dumb. Grade inflation first hit the Ivies in the late 1960s for a reason. Yale professor David Gelernter has noticed it in his students: “My students today are…so ignorant that it’s hard to accept how ignorant they are.… [I]t’s very hard to grasp that the person you’re talking to, who is bright, articulate, advisable, interested, and doesn’t know who Beethoven is. Had no view looking back at the history of the twentieth century—just sees a fog. A blank.”42 Camille Paglia once assigned the spiritual “Go Down, Moses” to an English seminar, only to discover to her horror that “of a class of twenty-five students, only two seemed to recognize the name ‘Moses’.… They did not know who he was.”
Wednesday, July 13. 2016
There is a book:
and here is an article: Most Of All We Hate The Experts Because They’re Always Wrong - If the experts got their remedies right, we would be a happy country with few problems, and they would deserve to feel superior.
... the experts (the educated elite) are always wrong in their prescriptions for the country—always. If they got their remedies right, we would be a happy country with few problems, and we wouldn’t care that the ruling class feels superior to the rest of us. They would deserve to feel superior.
Unfortunately, that has not been the case since at least 1960. Everything the experts have done has failed. Not just been disappointing, not just not lived up to the expectations, but failed spectacularly, making conditions far worse than they were before and destroying lives in the process. The list of examples is endless, but here are a few...
I am always a skeptic because it has served me well thus far in life - and because experts often lack common sense and they often fall in love with ideas.
Sunday, July 10. 2016
From Will automation kill the middle class—and democracy with it?
Machines are about to get very good at doing a range of tasks that human beings have historically been paid to perform. By some estimates, half of current jobs are in danger of being replaced. If anything close to this happens, a smaller and smaller share of the human population will possess skills that make them more productive than machines. As a larger supply of labor competes for fewer jobs, wages will fall for most, or dry up entirely. The owners of capital and property, physical and intellectual, will triumph. “With less need for human labor and judgment,” venture capitalist Vinod Khosla predicts, “labor will be devalued relative to capital and even more so relative to ideas and machine learning technology.”
Friday, July 8. 2016
That study about fecal bacteria and obesity? Retracted
That study about fracking and air pollution? Retracted.
Yes, they were peer-reviewed before publication. Peer reviewers rarely assess raw data. Studies are not facts. H/T to Powerline for informing us about Retraction Watch.
Tuesday, July 5. 2016
We posted Paul Simon this weekend. He lives in New Canaan, CT which is a slightly-distant NYC suburb. Who else lives there? Keith Richards! Of all people.
Those two, plus many other celebs, can be seen pushing their carts through the market in the village with no special attention paid. Connecticut is not Hollywood. Some rich celebs do not care about taxes, and just want a quiet, homey place to live where they can take a town car to the city whenever they want some fun.
Monday, July 4. 2016
First The Campbell Apartment, and now Pine Butte.
The 10,000-acre Pine Butte guest ranch in Montana's Rocky Mtn. foothills has been a favorite remote getaway for the Bird Dog family for many years. It's right on the edge of "the Bob" wilderness and south of Glacier. It is is a Grizzly preserve. Famous Ear Mountain is out the window.
My lad even spent a summer doing ranch work there, and got trapped in the outhouse by a bear who presumably did not wish to shit in the woods.
Horseback in the mountains, fossil-hunting on the prairie, hiking, bird watching, fishing in the mountain streams and lakes, rib-sticking home cookin, and steaks and campfires and pine logs sizzling in the cabin fireplaces. Also, gallons of Sun Tea. Whiskey and cigars as the sun sets. God's country. Many other such places, but this was what we liked.
For huddled Easterners, big sky in June is a dramatic revelation of Creation. There is a fine book, too. Ear Mountain figures prominently in it.
I understand why they decided to shut it down to the public. However, trust me, they will keep this special place open for major donors to the Nature Conservancy. I would have loved to take some grandkids there. It is America at its finest and wildest where antelope play, with crazy horses and real cowboys. I love it, but cannot be a Major Donor to The Nature Conservancy. I did not go into Wall St. finance despite several gracious invitations to do so. Had to follow my own path.
Sometimes I wonder whether I am oversensitive to loss. Probably I am, somewhat. I do have lots of pictures of that land with us on horses, somewhere.
 Was the author of The Great American Novel inspired by a romance?
I don't care, but it's always interesting to read about him. A great American.
Saturday, July 2. 2016
It's not the old thing about the Constitution and history and all that. My survey is about what individuals, citizens, do that are far less common in other lands. This survey was stimulated by Z-man's thoughts about citizenship in The Case of the Citizen Truly Stated.
He makes good points, but I think the main one is that a nation needs some tribal aspects to function as any sort of unity. To be a nation, there has to be a common Code.
I'll start it off:
- Americans have bake sales to raise money for their kids' schools
- Americans start businesses, fail, and try another one
- Americans start charities for people who died of rare diseases and have bike rides and runs to raise money
- Americans love to support their high school sports teams just for the fun of it
- Americans have millions of clubs and churches, and join them and work at them
- Enjoy many firearm sports
- Americans are ashamed to receive charity, and ashamed when they do not contribute to their community in positive ways.
- Bitch about government constantly
What's on your list?
Friday, July 1. 2016
It's a temple to the true Cocktails. All the history that’s going to die with the Campbell Apartment
By being a hipster-free zone, a quiet, dark, cozy bar filled with sofas where people behave and dress nicely, it had become one of my favorite retreats from the NYC streets. It has been almost like belonging to a fancy NY club, or a real speak-easy down to the gal at the door deciding whether you were appropriate for the place. Cool.
I am skeptical that one more trendy bar scene will support the $1 million/year rent on this little place, but who knows?
As for me, I avoid the glitzy and the trendy. The Apartment, as it will remain for a final month:
Thursday, June 23. 2016
Reviewed: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False:
Though an exceptionally short book, Mind and Cosmos is nevertheless, in one respect, extraordinarily ambitious. Nagel proposes not merely a new explanation for the origin of life and consciousness, but a new type of explanation: “natural teleology.” If psychophysical reduction is implausible, as Nagel has always insisted, then no materialist neo-Darwinian explanation will ever be satisfactory. The apparent alternative, a theistic-intentional account (i.e., intelligent design by a divinity), does not appeal to Nagel. He simply lacks, he explains, any sense of the divine. His interest is in the territory between the two: a secular account that allows for the emergence of mind as mind...
Are the leaders of our academic institutions complicit in the current student-led challenge to free speech and free expression on college campuses? Jonathan R. Cole thinks so.
Tuesday, June 21. 2016
From Thank You FedEx, For Standing Up to the Feds:
With more than 4,000 crimes in federal statutes and more than 300,000 more crimes specified in various federal regulations, every complex commercial enterprise is inevitably vulnerable to federal prosecution-and thus, given federal prosecutors' leverage, to oversight through a deferred- or non-prosecution agreement. What that means is that the Department of Justice has sweeping regulatory authority, which according to the D.C. Circuit's April decision in United States v. Fokker Services, federal judges have next to no power to review.
Nobody knows all of the laws and regs. Remember, Three Felonies A Day
Monday, June 20. 2016
 I think that the press and most of the politicians do not know the difference between an AR-15 and an AK-47. More likely, they don't care because incremental gun-grabbing is one of their missions. Thus any new regulation is a step towards the goal of citizen disarmament.
In case you think Second Amendment is standing in the way of banning semiautomatic weapons...
Apparently CT can outlaw some semiautomatic firearms. I have semi-automatic shotguns which I am certain will not fall under regulations - yet. The magazine is internal, so there is no visible clip. To comply with game laws, I have plugs in them to limit me to 3 cartridges (or bullets, as we term them).
Besides being black and ugly, I do not get the functional appeal of the highly-popular AR-15. It is not particularly powerful or useful at long distances. I think it is good fun at the range or close-in game hunting but there are better firearms for that. There is no accounting for taste, and the best thing to do is to pick a firearm for your use and to get good with it.
I think it might be the clips that the grabbers are using, in this case.
Thursday, June 16. 2016
It’s time for a better level of discourse over the push for opening bathrooms and showers to all comers. Women from the Left and Right are uniting to make that happen—and here’s the cultural argument for why.
The retrograde author insists that there exist men and women.
Monday, June 13. 2016
We and others have written about the topic of self-esteem and self-respect ad nauseum. There is healthy narcissism and unhealthy narcissism; there is healthy self-hatred and unhealthy self-hatred. Pride is a mortal sin, but pride in a difficult accomplishment seems like a good reward.
We generally consider self-respect as something which must earned against some inner or outer obstacles, struggles against fear, temptation, or external resistances and challenges. We generally think of self-esteem as similar to self-administered mother's love or God's love. That is, unearned and undeserved. A modest dose of that never hurts and few of us are thoroughly evil or worthless. A good dose of humility never hurts either. We all have plenty of reasons for self-contempt and self-disappointment, and those deserve our attention however unpleasant that may be. I do not trust people who are not open to doing that job on themselves.
More: Self-Esteem versus Self-Respect
A Letter to a Bright Young Woman
It is all almost entirely true. However, higher ed still can be somewhat like it used to be if and only if a student and his parents together make a plan to navigate the place so as to get the most out of it. A solid traditional education can usually be designed from their offerings just as a nutritional meal can be designed despite all the the junk in the supermarket. Seeking the most rigorous coursework and diving into constructive extracurriculars are good starts.
When the structure of a school would once make sure the student was a product of which the school could feel proud (literate, well-rounded, and, as they used to say, able to comprehend every section of the Sunday New York Times), now it is up to the paying parents to ensure that that happens.
Sunday, June 12. 2016
 Mrs. BD was discussing the elements of design with me as she has been working on yet another one of her design projects. We talk about rhythm, balance, repetition, unity, etc., but, above all, putting the specs first. Like a sonnet.
We thought that this wiki entry, Design elements and principles, offers a beautiful and succinct summary of the topic. Each section can lead to nifty conversation about almost anything.
Design principles can apply to anything that anybody wants to make beautiful: art, gardens, clothing, buildings, furniture, tools, music, etc. Come to think of it, even writing stories or making up a dance.
I know somebody whose career is industrial design. Give him the specs and he will design a work of functional art. With talent, function can be made beautiful.
Consider the humble sinuous scythe. One of my grampas, the industrialist, was a pro with a scythe on the farm. In Yankeeland, pronounced "sigh." Sad to admit, I have always been lazy and partial to power machinery but a good man with a scythe can do faster and better with the added benefit of keeping in shape.
They are Canon Fodder. A beginning list of the canonical minds who must be banned. Basically, anybody smarter than you. That is, the people whose brains, talents, and accomplishments damage your self-esteem and make you feel small. I guess admiration is passe.
It feels like the Cultural Revolution in China.
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